100 Greatest TV Shows

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Tomorrow, we reach the Top 10. Here are the hints:

Two places that no one knows really where they exist: one is known for a dysfunctional family, and the other is known for the mysterious man who introduced and ended the show.

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It is countdown time, and we're entering the Top 10! So, here is the show at number 10:

10. The Simpsons



Genre: Animation, Comedy.
Created by: Matt Groening.
Executive Producer(s): Al Jean, James L. Brooks, Matt Groening, and Sam Simon.
Starring: Dan Castellaneta (Homer Simpson, Abraham Simpson, Krusty the Clown, Barney Gumble, Groundskeeper Willie, Mayor Quimby, Hans Moleman, Sideshow Mel, Itchy, Kodos, Gil Gunderson, Squeaky Voiced Teen, Blue-Haired Lawyer, Rich Texan, Louie, Bill
Arnie Pie, Mr. Teeny, Yes Guy, Scott Christian, Assistant Superintendent Leopold, Rabbi Krustofski (replaced Jackie Mason), Charlie, Gary, Santa's Little Helper (replaced Frank Welker), and Frankie the Squealer), Julie Kavner (Marge Simpson, Patty Bouvier, Selma Bouvier, and Jacqueline Bouvier), Nancy Cartwright (Bart Simpson, Nelson Muntz, Todd Flanders, Ralph Wiggum, Kearney, Database, Wendell Borton, and Lewis), Yeardley Smith (Lisa Simpson), Hank Azaria (Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, Moe Szyslak, Police Chief Clancy Wiggum, Comic Book Guy, Lou, Carl Carlson, Dr. Nick Riviera, Snake Jailbird, Professor Frink, Kirk Van Houten, Luigi Risotto, Bumblebee Man, Captain Horatio McCallister, Superintendent Chalmers, Cletus Spuckler, Disco Stu, Duffman, Crazy Old Man, Drederick Tatum, Legs, Wiseguy, Akira, Doug, and Johnny Tightlips), Harry Shearer (Montgomery Burns, Waylon Smithers, Ned Flanders, Seymour Skinner, Otto Mann, Lenny Leonard, Reverend Timothy Lovejoy, Dr. Julius Hibbert, Kent Brockman, Jasper Beardley, Eddie, Rainier Wolfcastle, Scratchy, Marty, Dr. Marvin Monroe, Kang, Herman, Dewey Largo, Judge Snyder, Sanjay Nahasapeemapetilon, Benjamin, Jebediah Springfield, and God), Tress MacNeille (Agnes Skinner, Lindsey Naegle, Brandine Spuckler, Cookie Kwan, Crazy Cat Lady, Bernice Hibbert, Dolph Starbeam, Mrs. Glick, Poor Violet, Lunchlady Doris (previously voiced by Doris Grau), Ms. Albright, and Brunella Pommelhorst), Pamela Hayden (Milhouse Van Houten, Rod Flanders, Jimbo Jones, Janey Powell, Sarah Wiggum, Malibu Stacy, Patches, Ruth Powers (replaced Pamela Reed), Wendell Borton, Lewis, Richard), Maggie Roswell (Maude Flanders, Helen Lovejoy, Elizabeth Hoover (her plus the previous two characters were voiced by Marcia Mitzman Gaven from 1999 to 2002 because Roswell resigned after FOX refused to raise her travel expenses), Luann Van Houten, Princess Kashmir, and Mary Bailey), Russi Taylor (Martin Prince, Üter, Sherri and Terri, Wendell Borton, and Lewis), Karl Wiedergott (Various voices), Marcia Wallace (Edna Krabappel), Kelsey Grammer (Sideshow Bob), Joe Mantegna (Fat Tony), Albert Brooks (Hank Scorpio, Jacques "Brunswick", Cowboy Bob, Brad Goodman, and Tab Spangler), Jon Lovitz (Artie Ziff, Professor Lombardo, Aristotle Amadopoulos, Jay Sherman, Llewellyn Sinclair, Mrs. Sinclair, and Enrico Irritazio), Jan Hooks (Manjula Nahasapeemapetilon), Maurice LaMarche (Various voices), Jane Kaczmarek (Judge Constance Harm), Doris Grau (Lunchlady Doris), Phil Hartman (Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz), Frank Welker (Santa's Little Helper, Snowball II, and various other animals) Marcia Mitzman Gaven (Maude Flanders, Helen Lovejoy, Elizabeth Hoover, and voiced the majority of Maggie Roswell's characters between 1999 and 2002, due to Roswell's contract dispute), Jo Ann Harris (Various voices), and Christopher Collins (Moe Syszlak, Mr. Burns, and the presenter of America's Most Armed and Dangerous).
Country of Origin: United States.
Number of Seasons: 19.
Number of Episodes: 420.
Running Time: 22-24 minutes.
Original Channel: FOX.
Original Run: December 17, 1989 – present.
Spinoffs: The show originally started as a series of short cartoons on The Tracy Ullman Show and was eventually spunoff into its own show. There was also a movie made based on the show: “The Simpsons Movie” (2007). Though, not an actual spinoff, it should be mentioned that Matt Groening created another show with a similar tone and sense of humor but with a radically different premise: Futurama, which is about a pizza boy that gets frozen and wakes up in the year 3000.

Groening conceived of the idea for the Simpsons in the lobby of James L. Brooks' office. Brooks had asked Groening to pitch an idea for a series of animated shorts, which Groening initially intended to present as his Life in Hell series. However, when Groening realized that animating Life in Hell would require the rescinding of publication rights for his life's work, he chose another approach and formulated his version of a dysfunctional family. He named the characters after his own family members, substituting "Bart" for his own name. The Simpson family first appeared as shorts in The Tracey Ullman Show on April 19, 1987. Groening submitted only basic sketches to the animators and assumed that the figures would be cleaned-up in production. However, the animators merely re-traced his drawings, which led to the crude appearance of the characters in the initial short episodes. In 1989, a team of production companies adapted The Simpsons into a half-hour series for the FOX Broadcasting Company. The team included what is now the Klasky Csupo animation house. Jim Brooks negotiated a provision in the contract with the FOX network that prevented FOX from interfering with the show's content. Groening said his goal in creating the show was to offer the audience an alternative to what he called "the mainstream trash" that they were watching. The half-hour series premiered on December 17, 1989 with "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire", a Christmas special. "Some Enchanted Evening" was the first full-length episode produced, but it did not broadcast until May 1990 because of animation problems. The Simpsons was the FOX network's first TV series to rank among a season's top 30 highest-rated shows. Its success prompted FOX to reschedule the series to compete with The Cosby Show, a move that hurt the ratings of The Simpsons. In 1992, Tracey Ullman filed a lawsuit against FOX, claiming that her show was the source of the series' success. The suit said she should receive a share of the profits of The Simpsons, a claim rejected by the courts. The show was controversial from its beginning. The rebellious lead character at the time, Bart, frequently received no punishment for his misbehavior, which led some parents and conservatives to characterize him as a poor role model for children. At the time, then-President George H. W. Bush said, "We're going to strengthen the American family to make them more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons." Several U.S. public schools even banned The Simpsons merchandise and t-shirts, such as one featuring Bart and the caption "Underachiever ('And proud of it, man!')." Despite the ban, The Simpsons merchandise sold well and generated US$2 billion in revenue during the first 14 months of sales. Matt Groening and James L. Brooks have served as executive producers during the show's entire history, and also function as creative consultants. Sam Simon, who served as creative supervisor for the first four seasons, also still receives an executive producer credit despite not having worked on the show since 1993. A more involved position on the show is the show runner, who acts as head writer and manages the show's production for an entire season. The Simpsons's writing team consists of sixteen writers who propose episode ideas at the beginning of each December. The main writer of each episode writes the first draft. Group rewriting sessions develop final scripts by adding or removing jokes, inserting scenes, and calling for re-readings of lines by the show’s vocal performers. The leader of these sessions is George Meyer, who has developed the show since Season One. According to long-time writer Jon Vitti, Meyer usually invents the best lines in a given episode, even though other writers may receive script credits. Each episode takes six months to produce so the show rarely comments on current events. However, episodes occasionally mention planned events, such as the Olympics or the Super Bowl. At the end of 2007 the writers of The Simpsons went on strike together with the rest of the Writers Guild of America, East. The show's writers had joined the guild in 1998. The strike will only affect one of the planned twenty-three episodes in the 19th season. With one exception, episode credits list only the voice actors, and not the characters they voice. Both FOX and the production crew wanted to keep their identities secret during the early seasons and, therefore, closed most of the recording sessions while refusing to publish photos of the recording artists. However, the network eventually revealed which roles each actor performed in the episode "Old Money", because the producers said the voice actors should receive credit for their work. In 2003, the cast appeared in an episode of Inside the Actors Studio, doing live performances of their characters' voices. The Simpsons has six main cast members. Dan Castellaneta performs Homer Simpson, Abraham Simpson, Krusty the Clown, Barney Gumble and other adult, male characters. Julie Kavner speaks the voices of Marge Simpson and Patty and Selma, as well as several minor characters. Nancy Cartwright performs the voices of Bart Simpson, Ralph Wiggum and other children. Yeardley Smith, the voice of Lisa Simpson, is the only cast member who regularly voices only one character, although she occasionally plays other episodic characters. There are two male actors who do not voice members of the title family but play a majority of the male townspeople. Hank Azaria voices recurring characters such as Moe, Chief Wiggum, and Apu, and Harry Shearer provides voices for Mr. Burns, Smithers, Principal Skinner, Ned Flanders, Reverend Lovejoy, and Dr. Hibbert. With the exception of Harry Shearer, every main cast member has won an Emmy for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance. Up until 1998, the six main actors were paid $30,000 per episode. In 1998 they were involved in a pay dispute with FOX. The company threatened to replace them with new actors, even going as far as preparing for casting of new voices. The series creator Groening supported the actors in their action. However, the issue was soon resolved and, from 1998 to 2004, they were paid $125,000 per episode. The show's revenue continued to rise through syndication and DVD sales, and in April 2004 the main cast stopped appearing for script readings, demanding they be paid $360,000 per episode. The strike was resolved a month later and their salaries were increased to something between $250,000 and $360,000 per episode. In 2008, production for the twentieth season was put on hold due to new contract negotiations with the voice actors, who wanted a "healthy bump" in salary to an amount close to $500,000 per episode. The dispute was soon resolved, and the actors' salary was raised to $400,000 per episode. In addition to the main cast, Pamela Hayden, Tress MacNeille, Marcia Wallace, Maggie Roswell, and Russi Taylor voice supporting characters. From 1999 to 2002, Maggie Roswell's characters were voiced by Marcia Mitzman Gaven. Karl Wiedergott has appeared in minor roles, but does not voice any recurring characters. Repeat "special guest" cast members include Albert Brooks, Phil Hartman, Jon Lovitz, Joe Mantegna, and Kelsey Grammer. Episodes will quite often feature guest voices from a wide range of professions, including actors, athletes, authors, bands, musicians and scientists. In the earlier seasons, most of the guest stars voiced characters, but eventually more started appearing as themselves. Tony Bennett was the first guest star to appear as himself, appearing briefly in the season two episode "Dancin' Homer". The Simpsons holds the world record for "Most Guest Stars Featured in a Television Series." The show has been dubbed into several other languages, including Japanese, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. It is also one the few programs dubbed in both French and Quebec French. The Simpsons has been broadcast in Arabic, but due to Islamic customs, numerous aspects of the show have been changed. For example, Homer drinks soda instead of beer and eats Egyptian beef sausages instead of hot dogs. Because of such changes, the Arabized version of the series met with a negative reaction from the life-long Simpsons fans in the area. Several different U.S. and international studios animate The Simpsons. Throughout the run of the animated shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show, the animation was produced domestically at Klasky Csupo. With the debut of the series, because of an increased workload, FOX subcontracted production to several international studios, located in South Korea. Artists at the U.S. animation studio, Film Roman, draw storyboards, design new characters, backgrounds, props and draw character and background layouts, which in turn become animatics to be screened for the writers at Gracie Films for any changes to be made before the work is shipped overseas. The overseas studios then draw the inbetweens, ink and paint, and render the animation to tape before it is shipped back to the United States to be delivered to FOX three to four months later. For the first three seasons, Klasky Csupo animated The Simpsons in the United States. In 1992, the show's production company, Gracie Films, switched domestic production to Film Roman, who continue to animate the show as of 2008. In Season 14, production switched from traditional cel animation to digital ink and paint. The first episode to experiment with digital coloring was "Radioactive Man" in 1995. Animators used digital ink and paint during production of the Season 12 episode "Tennis the Menace", but Gracie Films delayed the regular use of digital ink and paint until two seasons later. The already completed "Tennis the Menace" was broadcast as made. The Simpsons are a typical family who live in a fictional "Middle American" town of Springfield. Homer, the father, works as a safety inspector at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant: a position at odds with his careless, buffoonish personality. He is married to Marge Simpson, a stereotypical American housewife and mother. They have three children: Bart, a ten-year-old troublemaker; Lisa, a precocious eight-year-old activist; and Maggie, a baby who rarely speaks, but communicates by sucking on a pacifier. The family owns a dog, Santa's Little Helper, and a cat, Snowball II. Both pets have had starring roles in several episodes. Despite the passing of yearly milestones such as holidays or birthdays, the Simpsons do not physically age and still appear just as they did at the end of the 1980s (slight differences in animation style notwithstanding). The show includes an array of quirky characters: co-workers, teachers, family friends, extended relatives, townspeople and local celebrities. The creators originally intended many of these characters as one-time jokesters or for fulfilling needed functions in the town. A number of them have gained expanded roles and subsequently starred in their own episodes. According to Matt Groening, the show adopted the concept of a large supporting cast from the comedy show SCTV. The Simpsons takes place in the fictional American town of Springfield, without any geographical coordinates or references to U.S. states that might identify which part of the country it represents. Nevertheless, fans have tried to determine the town's location by taking the town's characteristics, surrounding geography, and nearby landmarks as clues. As a response, the show has become intentionally evasive in regard to Springfield's location. The name "Springfield" is a common one in America and appears in over half of the states. Springfield's geography, and that of its surroundings, contain coastlines, deserts, vast farmland, tall mountains, or whatever the story or joke requires. Despite this, Groening has said that Springfield has much in common with Portland, Oregon, the city where he grew up. The Simpsons uses the standard setup of a situational comedy or "sitcom" as its premise. The series centers on a family and their life in a typical American town. However, because of its animated nature, The Simpsons's scope is larger than that of a regular sitcom. The town of Springfield acts as a complete universe in which characters can explore the issues faced by modern society. By having Homer work in a nuclear power plant, the show can comment on the state of the environment. Through Bart and Lisa's days at Springfield Elementary School, the show's writers illustrate pressing or controversial issues in the field of education. The town features a vast array of media channels from kids' television programming to local news, which enables the producers to make jokes about themselves and the entertainment industry. Some commentators say the show is political in nature and susceptible to a left-wing bias. Al Jean admitted in an interview that "We [the show] are of liberal bent." The writers often evince an appreciation for progressive ideals, but the show makes jokes across the political spectrum. The show portrays government and large corporations as callous entities that take advantage of the common worker. Thus, the writers often portray authority figures in an unflattering or negative light. In The Simpsons, politicians are corrupt, ministers such as Reverend Lovejoy are indifferent to churchgoers, and the local police force is incompetent. Religion also figures as a recurring theme. In times of crisis, the family often turns to God, and the show has dealt with most of the major religions. The show is know for man hallmarks:

Opening sequence (Chalkboard And Couch Gags): The Simpsons' opening sequence is one of the show's most memorable hallmarks. Most episodes open with the camera zooming through the show's title towards the town of Springfield. The camera then follows the members of the family on their way home. Upon entering their house, the Simpsons settle down on their couch to watch television. The opening was created by David Silverman, the first task he did when production began on the show. The series' distinctive theme song was composed by musician Danny Elfman in 1989, after Groening approached him requesting a retro style piece. This piece, which took two days to create, has been noted by Elfman as the most popular of his career. One of the most distinctive aspects of the opening is that several segments are changed from episode to episode. Bart writes something different on the school chalkboard, Lisa might play a different solo on her saxophone and a different visual gag accompanies the family as they enter their living room to sit on the couch.

Halloween episodes (Treehouse of Horror): The special Halloween episode has become an annual tradition. "Treehouse of Horror" first broadcast in 1990 as part of season two and established the pattern of three separate, self-contained stories in each Halloween episode. These pieces usually involve the family in some horror, science fiction, or supernatural setting and often parody or pay homage to a famous piece of work in those genres. They always take place outside the normal continuity of the show. Although the Treehouse series is meant to be seen on Halloween, in recent years, new installments have premiered after Halloween due to FOX's current contract with Major League Baseball's World Series.

Humor: The show's humor turns on cultural references that cover a wide spectrum of society so that viewers from all generations can enjoy the show. Such references, for example, come from movies, television, music, literature, science, and history. Whenever possible, the animators also put jokes or sight gags into the show's background via humorous or incongruous bits of text in signs, newspapers, and elsewhere. The audience may often not notice the visual jokes in a single viewing. Some are so fleeting that they become apparent only by pausing a video recording of the show. Kristin Thompson argues that The Simpsons uses a "...flurry of cultural references, intentionally inconsistent characterization, and considerable self-reflexivity about television conventions and the status of the program as a television show." The show uses catchphrases, and most of the primary and secondary characters have at least one each. Notable expressions include Homer's annoyed grunt "D'oh!", Mr. Burns' "Excellent..." and Nelson Muntz's "Ha-ha!". Some of Bart's catchphrases, such as "¡Ay, caramba!", "Don't have a cow, man!" and "Eat my shorts!" appeared on t-shirts in the show's early days. However, Bart rarely used the latter two phrases until after they became popular through the merchandising. The use of many of these catchphrases has declined in recent seasons. The episode "Bart Gets Famous" mocks catchphrase-based humor, as Bart achieves fame on the Krusty the Clown Show solely for saying "I didn't do it."

Due to being on for so long, the show has had a big impact on popular culture:

Language: A number of neologisms that originated on The Simpsons have entered the popular vernacular. Mark Liberman, director of the Linguistic Data Consortium, remarked, "The Simpsons has apparently taken over from Shakespeare and the Bible as our culture's greatest source of idioms, catchphrases and sundry other textual allusions." The most famous catchphrase is Homer's annoyed grunt: "D'oh!" So ubiquitous is the expression that it is now listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, but without the apostrophe. Dan Castellaneta says he borrowed the phrase from James Finlayson, an actor in early Laurel and Hardy comedies, who pronounced it in a more elongated and whining tone. The director of The Simpsons told Castellaneta to shorten the noise, and it went on to become the well-known exclamation in the TV series. The phrase has even been used (in a Homer Simpson context) in international productions, such as a 2008 episode of the UK television series, Doctor Who. Other Simpsons expressions that have entered popular use include "excellent" (drawn out as a sinister "eeeexcelllent…" in the style of Charles Montgomery Burns), Homer's triumphant "Woohoo!" and Nelson Muntz's mocking "HA-ha!" Groundskeeper Willie's description of the French as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" was used by conservative National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg in 2003, after France's opposition to the proposed invasion of Iraq. The phrase quickly spread to other journalists. "Cromulent", a word used in "Lisa the Iconoclast" has since appeared in the Webster’s New Millennium Dictionary of English. "Kwyjibo", a fake Scrabble word invented by Bart in "Bart the Genius", was used as one of the aliases of the creator of the Melissa worm. "I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords", was used by Kent Brockman in "Deep Space Homer" and has seeped into popular culture to describe a number of events. Variants of Brockman's utterance are used to express mock submission, usually for the purpose of humor. It has been used in media, such as New Scientist magazine. The dismissive term "Meh" has also been popularized by the show.

Television: The Simpsons was the first successful animated program in prime time since Wait Till Your Father Gets Home in the 1970s. During most of the 1980s, pundits considered animated shows as appropriate only for children, and animating a show was too expensive to achieve a quality suitable for prime-time television. The Simpsons changed this perception. The use of Korean animation studios doing in-betweening, coloring, and filming made the episodes cheaper. The success of The Simpsons and the lower production cost prompted television networks to take chances on other animated series. This development led to a 1990s boom in new, animated prime-time shows, such as South Park, Family Guy, King of the Hill, Futurama, and The Critic. South Park later paid homage to The Simpsons with the episode "Simpsons Already Did It." The Simpsons has also influenced live-action shows like Malcolm in the Middle, which debuted January 9, 2000 in the time slot after The Simpsons. Malcolm in the Middle featured the use of sight gags and did not use a laugh track like most sitcoms. Ricky Gervais has called The Simpsons a major influence on his British comedy The Office, which also dispenses with a laugh track. The Simpsons has been praised by many critics, being described as "the most irreverent and unapologetic show on the air." In a 1990 review of the show, Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly described it as "the American family at its most complicated, drawn as simple cartoons. It's this neat paradox that makes millions of people turn away from the three big networks on Sunday nights to concentrate on The Simpsons." Tucker would also describe the show as a "pop-cultural phenomenon, a prime-time cartoon show that appeals to the entire family."

The Simpsons has won dozens of awards since it debuted as a series, including 23 Emmy Awards, 26 Annie Awards, and a Peabody Award. In a 1998 issue celebrating the 20th century's greatest achievements in arts and entertainment, Time magazine named The Simpsons the century's best television series. In that same issue, Time included Bart Simpson in the Time 100, the publication's list of the century's 100 most influential people. Bart was the only fictional character on the list. On January 14, 2000, the Simpsons were awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Also in 2000, Entertainment Weekly magazine TV critic Ken Tucker named The Simpsons the greatest television show of the 1990s. Furthermore, viewers of the UK television channel Channel 4 have voted "The Simpsons" at the top of two polls: 2001's 100 Greatest Kids' TV shows, and 2005's 100 Greatest Cartoons, with Homer Simpson voted into first place in 2001's 100 Greatest TV Characters. Homer would also place ninth on Entertainment Weekly's list of the "50 Greatest TV icons". In 2002, The Simpsons ranked #8 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time; in 2007 it was included in TIME's list of the "100 Best TV Shows of All Time"; in 2008 the show placed first on AOL's list of "TV's 50 best comedies - ever"; and also in 2008 the show was placed in first on Entertainment Weekly's "Top 100 Shows of the Past 25 Years" On February 9, 1997, The Simpsons surpassed The Flintstones with the episode "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show" as the longest-running prime-time animated series in the United States. In 2004, The Simpsons replaced The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952 to 1966) as the longest-running sitcom (animated or live action) in the United States. In October 2004, Scooby-Doo briefly overtook The Simpsons as the American animated show with the highest number of episodes.[ However, network executives in April 2005 again cancelled Scooby-Doo, which finished with 371 episodes, and The Simpsons reclaimed the title with 378 episodes at the end of their seventeenth season. In May 2007, The Simpsons reached their 400th episode at the end of the eighteenth season. While The Simpsons has the record for the number of episodes by an American animated show, other animated series have surpassed The Simpsons. For example, the Japanese anime series Sazae-san has close to 2,000 episodes to its credit. The year 2007 marks the twentieth anniversary of The Simpsons franchise. With its nineteenth year (2007–2008), the series will be only one season behind Gunsmoke's U.S. primetime, scripted television record of 20 produced seasons. However, Gunsmoke's episode count of 635 episodes far surpasses The Simpsons, which would not reach that mark until its 29th season, under normal programming schedules. Critics' reviews of new Simpsons episodes praised the show for its wit, realism, and intelligence. In the late-1990s, the tone and emphasis of the show began to change. Some critics started calling the show "tired." By 2000, some long-term fans had become disillusioned with the show and pointed to its shift from character-driven plots to what they perceived as an overemphasis on zany antics. Author Douglas Coupland described claims of declining quality in the series as "hogwash", saying "The Simpsons hasn't fumbled the ball in fourteen years, it's hardly likely to fumble it now." Mike Scully, who was showrunner during seasons nine through twelve, has been the subject of criticism. Chris Suellentrop of Slate wrote "under Scully's tenure, The Simpsons became, well, a cartoon. [...] Episodes that once would have ended with Homer and Marge bicycling into the sunset now end with Homer blowing a tranquilizer dart into Marge's neck. The show's still funny, but it hasn't been touching in years." In 2003, to celebrate the show's 300th episode "Barting Over", USA Today published a pair of Simpsons related articles: a top-ten episodes list chosen by the webmaster of The Simpsons Archive fansite, and a top-15 list by The Simpsons' own writers. The most recent episode listed on the fan list was 1997's "Homer's Phobia"; the Simpsons' writers most recent choice was 2000's "Behind the Laughter". In 2004, Harry Shearer criticized what he perceived as the show's declining quality: "I rate the last three seasons as among the worst, so Season Four looks very good to me now." The Simpsons managed to maintain a large viewership and attract new fans. While the first season enjoyed an average of 13.4 million viewers per episode in the U.S., the nineteenth season had an average of 7.7 million viewers. In an April 2006 interview, Matt Groening said, "I honestly don't see any end in sight. I think it's possible that the show will become too financially cumbersome... but right now, the show is creatively, I think, as good or better than it's ever been. The animation is incredibly detailed and imaginative, and the stories do things that we haven't done before. So creatively there's no reason to quit." The popularity of The Simpsons has made it a billion-dollar merchandizing industry. The title family and supporting characters appear on everything from t-shirts to posters. On April 24, 2007, it was officially announced that a Simpsons Ride will be implemented into the Universal Studios Orlando and Universal Studios Hollywood. It is scheduled for a Spring 2008 opening. The Simpsons has inspired special editions of well-known board games, including Clue, Scrabble, Monopoly, Operation, and The Game of Life, as well as the trivia games What Would Homer Do? and Simpsons Jeopardy!. Several card games such as trump cards and The Simpsons Trading Card Game have also been released. Numerous Simpson-related publications have been released over the years. So far, nine comic book series have been published by Bongo Comics since 1993. The Simpsons and Bart Simpson comics are also reprinted in the United Kingdom, under the same titles, with various stories from the other Bongo series reprinted in the main Simpsons comic. The comics have also been collected in book form; many other Simpsons books such as episode guides have also been published. Collections of original music featured in the TV series have been released on the albums Songs in the Key of Springfield and Go Simpsonic with The Simpsons. Several songs have been recorded with the purpose of a single or album release and have not been featured on the show. The best known single is "Do the Bartman", which was co-written by Michael Jackson, and became an international success, topping the UK Singles Chart for three weeks, and being certified gold by the BPI. In the United Kingdom, "Deep, Deep Trouble" was released as a follow up to "Do The Bartman." The albums The Simpsons Sing the Blues and The Yellow Album contained cover versions of songs, as well as some originals. As a promotion for “The Simpsons Movie,” twelve 7-Eleven stores were transformed into Kwik-E-Marts and sold The Simpsons related products. These included "Buzz Cola", "Krusty-O" cereal, Pink doughnuts with sprinkles, and "Squishees." In 2007, it was announced that The Simpsons Ride, a motion simulator ride, would open at Universal Studios Florida and Universal Studios Hollywood and would replace Back to the Future: The Ride at both locations. The ride at Universal Studios Florida opened on April 28, 2008, with the official ceremonies set to take place in May. The ride at Universal Studios Hollywood opened on May 19, 2008. In the ride, patrons are introduced to a cartoon theme park called Krustyland built by Krusty the Clown. However, Sideshow Bob is loose from prison to get revenge on Krusty and the Simpson family. Many episodes of the show have been released on DVD and VHS over the years. When the first season DVD was released in 2001, it quickly became the best-selling television DVD in history, although it was later overtaken by the first season of Chappelle's Show. In particular, seasons one through ten have been released on DVD in the U.S. (Region 1), Europe (Region 2) and Australia/New Zealand/Latin America (Region 4) with more seasons expected to be released in the future. The video game industry was quick to adapt the characters and world of Springfield into games. Some of the early games include Konami's arcade game The Simpsons (1991) and Acclaim Entertainment's The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants (1991). More modern games include The Simpsons Road Rage (2001), The Simpsons Hit & Run (2003) and The Simpsons Game (2007). Two Simpsons pinball machines have been produced; one that was available briefly after the first season, and another that is still available for purchase. 20th Century Fox, Gracie Films, and Film Roman produced an animated The Simpsons film that was released on July 27, 2007. The film was directed by long-time Simpsons producer David Silverman and written by a team of Simpsons writers comprising Matt Groening, James L. Brooks, Al Jean, George Meyer, Mike Reiss, John Swartzwelder, Jon Vitti, David Mirkin, Mike Scully, Matt Selman, and Ian Maxtone-Graham. Production of the film occurred alongside continued writing of the series despite long-time claims by those involved in the show that a film would enter production only after the series had concluded. There had been talk of a possible feature-length Simpsons film ever since the early seasons of the series. James L. Brooks originally thought that the story of the episode "Kamp Krusty" was suitable for a film, but encountered difficulties in trying to expand the script to feature-length. For a long time, difficulties such as lack of a suitable story and an already fully engaged crew of writers delayed the project. After winning a FOX and USA Today competition, Springfield, Vermont hosted the film's world premiere. “The Simpsons Movie” grossed a combined total of $74 million in its opening weekend in the United States, taking it to the top of the box office, and set the record for highest grossing opening weekend for a film based on a television series, surpassing Mission Impossible II. It opened at the top of the international box office, taking $96 million from seventy-one overseas territories, including $27.8 million in the United Kingdom, making it FOX's second highest opening ever in that country. In Australia, it grossed AU$13.2 million, the biggest opening for an animated film and third largest opening weekend in the country. As of December 17, 2007 the film has a worldwide gross of $526,622,545.

Yes, I know The Simpsons is not as good as it use to be, but here’s the thing…well, two things actually: 1. It may not be as good as it once was, but it is better than a lot of shows on TV today (I’d rather watch all The Simpsons episodes for the last four years than just one episode of The Hills or I Love New York). 2. When it was good, there was practically nothing better or funnier. The Simpsons is the TV equivalent of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (once parodied in the opening "couch gag"): after it came along, nothing was the same. It established a generation's cultural references and sensibility; is there any situation without a suitable Simpsons quote? And, to think this all started back in the mid 1980s, when an indigent Los Angeles-based newspaper cartoonist named Matt Groening was approached by a fan, producer-director James L. Brooks, to provide some animated cartoons to run between sketches on The Tracey Ullman Show. Groening came up with the Simpsons, a bright-yellow-skinned dysfunctional family who debuted in April of 1987. The dad, Homer, was a stupid but wily, loving but greedy oaf with an insatiable appetite for doughnuts in the morning (Mmm…doughnuts) in the morning, beer (Mmm…beer) at night, and pretty much anything and everything in between (Mmm…free goo.). The mom, Marge, was wise and kind but nagging and had a think column of blue hair. The son, Bart, was the consummate 10-year-old wise guy who constantly gets in trouble. The daughter, Lisa, was the consummate 8-year-old sensitive girl with an annoying genius intellect. And, the baby, Maggie, was a sweet little tot who loves her pacifier and hurting people (she did shoot Mr. Burns). After three years on The Tracey Ullman Show, FOX decided to give the Simpson clan their own show. Needless to say, the rest is history…but I’ll say it anyway: the show quickly became the deepest, richest, and wittiest cartoon ever made for TV and becoming an international pop-cult phenomenon, characterized by much solemn media hand-wringing over Bart’s guilt-free impudence and his rude catchphrase, “Don’t have a cow, man!” And, much like the show itself, the town of Springfield (on the borders of Ohio, Maine, Nevada, and Kentucky) grew huge as well, becoming one of the richest and densest universes on TV since Star Trek. Starting out as a family cartoon, it grew a cast of hundreds that spanned celebrity (Ranier Wolfcastle, Troy McClure), religion (Reverend Lovejoy, the de-diddly-vout Flanders family), business (C. Montgomery Burns, the Rich Texan), crime (Chief Wiggum, Fat Tony), and immigration (Apu, Groundskeeper Willie). But maybe its best and favorite subject has been television itself ("Teacher, mother, secret lover!" as Homer would say, getting closer to the heart of the medium’s appeal than entire generations of pop culture scholars ever could) which it has lampooned through Krusty the Clown, Kent Brockman, Duffman, and the Laramie Cigarette sponsorship of Radioactive Man. It even embodies its own critique in the person of crabby superfan Comic Book Guy, who would probably call any episode that disappointed a little “Worst. Episode. Ever.” And, yeah, maybe it should have gone off the air years ago. But, I doubt it will go away anytime soon. It has become such a fixture on TV that it won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. The Simpsons is stuck on Sunday nights on FOX like Homer stuck in an inflatable tube (D’OH!).

[Hulk With A Mustache]

9. The Twilight Zone



Genre: Horror, Mystery, Science Fiction, Comedy, Drama.
Created by: Rod Serling.
Executive Producer(s): Rod Serling.
Starring: Rod Serling.
Country of Origin: United States.
Number of Seasons: 5.
Number of Episodes: 156.
Running Time: 30 minutes (Seasons 1-3 and 5), 60 minutes (Season 4).
Original Channel: CBS.
Original Run: 1959-1964
Spinoffs: There were two revivals: The New Twilight Zone that aired on CBS from 1985-1989, and The Twilight Zone that aired on UPN from 2002-2003. There were also two Twilight Zone movies: “The Twilight Zone Movie” (1983) and “The Twilight Zone: Rod Serling’s Lost Classics” (1994).

By the late 1950s, Rod Serling was not a new name to television. His successful teleplays included Patterns (for Kraft Television Theater) and Requiem for a Heavyweight (for Playhouse 90), but constant changes and edits made by the networks and sponsors frustrated Serling, who decided that creating his own show was the best way to get around these obstacles. He thought that behind a television series with robots, aliens and other supernatural occurrences, he could also express his political views in a more subtle fashion. "The Time Element" was Serling's 1957 pilot pitch for his show, a time travel adventure about a man who travels back to Honolulu in 1941 and unsuccessfully tries to warn everyone about the impending attack on Pearl Harbor. The script, however, was rejected and shelved for a year until Bert Granet discovered and produced it as an episode of Desilu Playhouse in 1958. The show was a huge success and enabled Serling to finally begin production on his anthology series, The Twilight Zone. The Twilight Zone premiered the night of October 2, 1959 to rave reviews. "...Twilight Zone is about the only show on the air that I actually look forward to seeing. It's the one series that I will let interfere with other plans," said Terry Turner for the Chicago Daily News. Others agreed, the Daily Variety ranking it with "the best that has ever been accomplished in half-hour filmed television" and the New York Herald Tribune finding it to be "certainly the best and most original anthology series of the year." Even as the show proved popular to television's critics, it struggled to find a receptive audience of television viewers. CBS was banking on a rating of at least 21 or 22, but its initial numbers were much worse. The series' future was jeopardized when its third episode, "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" earned an abysmal 16.3 rating. The show attracted a large enough audience to survive a brief hiatus in November, during which it finally surpassed its competition on ABC and NBC and convinced its sponsors (General Foods and Kimberly-Clark) to stay on until the end of the season. With one exception ("The Chaser"), the first season featured only scripts written by Rod Serling, Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson, a team that was eventually responsible for 127 of the show's 156 episodes. Many of the first season's episodes proved to be among the series' most celebrated, including "Time Enough at Last", "Walking Distance" and "The After Hours". The first season won Serling an unprecedented fourth Emmy for dramatic writing, a Producers Guild Award for Serling's creative partner Buck Houghton and the Hugo Award for best dramatic presentation. The second season premiered on September 30, 1960 with "King Nine Will Not Return", Serling's fresh take on the pilot episode "Where Is Everybody?". The familiarity of this first story stood in stark contrast to the novelty of the show's new packaging: Bernard Herrmann's original theme had been replaced by Marius Constant's guitar-and-bongo riff, the Daliesque landscapes of the original opening were replaced by an even more surreal introduction inspired by the new images in Serling's narration ("That's the signpost up ahead"), and Serling himself stepped in front of the cameras for the first time to present his opening narration surrounded by the scenery he was describing. A new sponsor, Colgate-Palmolive, replaced the previous year's Kimberly-Clark and a new network executive, James Aubrey took over CBS. "Jim Aubrey was a very, very difficult problem for the show", said associate producer Del Reisman. "He was particularly tough on The Twilight Zone because for its time it was a particularly costly half hour show.... Aubrey was real tough on [the show's budget] even when it was a small number of dollars." In a push to keep The Twilight Zone's expenses down, Aubrey ordered that seven fewer episodes be produced than last season and that six of those being produced would be shot on videotape rather than film. The second season saw the production of many of the series' most acclaimed episodes, including "The Eye of the Beholder" and "The Invaders". The trio of Serling, Matheson and Beaumont began to admit new writers, and this season saw the television debut of George Clayton Johnson. Emmys were won by Serling (his fifth) for dramatic writing and by director of photography George T. Clemens and, for the second year in a row, the series won the Hugo Award for best dramatic presentation. It also earned the Unity Award for "Outstanding Contributions to Better Race Relations" and an Emmy nomination for "Outstanding Program Achievement in the Field of Drama." In his third year as executive producer, host, narrator and primary writer for The Twilight Zone, Serling was beginning to feel exhausted. "I've never felt quite so drained of ideas as I do at this moment", said the 37-year old playwright at the time. In the first two seasons he contributed 48 scripts, or 73% of the show's total output. He contributed only 56% of the third season's. "The show now seems to be feeding off itself", said a Variety reviewer of the season's second episode, who couldn't understand Serling's endless and exhaustive treatment of themes, "Twilight Zone seems to be running dry of inspiration." Despite his avowed weariness, Serling again managed to produce several teleplays that are widely regarded as classics, including "It's a Good Life", "To Serve Man" and "Five Characters in Search of an Exit". Scripts by Montgomery Pittman and Earl Hamner Jr. supplemented Matheson and Beaumont's output, and George Clayton Johnson submitted three teleplays that examined complex themes. The episode "I Sing the Body Electric" could boast: "Written by Ray Bradbury". By the end of the third season, the series had reached over 100 episodes. The Twilight Zone received two Emmy nominations (for cinematography and art design), but was awarded neither. It again received the Hugo Award for "Best Dramatic Presentation", making it the only three-time recipient. In spring 1962, The Twilight Zone was late in finding a sponsor for its fourth season and was replaced on CBS' fall schedule with a new hour-long situation comedy called Fair Exchange. In the confusion that followed this apparent cancellation, producer Buck Houghton left the series for a position at Four Star Productions. Serling meanwhile accepted a teaching post at Antioch College, his alma mater. Though the series was eventually renewed, Serling's contribution as executive producer decreased in its final seasons. In November 1962 CBS contracted Twilight Zone (now sans the “The”) as a mid-season January replacement for Fair Exchange, the very show that replaced it in the September 1962 schedule. In order to fill Fair Exchange’s timeslot each episode had to be expanded to an hour, an idea which did not sit well with the production crew. “Ours is the perfect half-hour show,” said Serling just a few years earlier. “If we went to an hour, we’d have to fleshen our stories, soap opera style. Viewers could watch fifteen minutes without knowing whether they were in a Twilight Zone or Desilu Playhouse." Herbert Hirschman was hired to replace long-time producer Buck Houghton. One of Hirschman's first decisions was to direct a new opening sequence, this one illustrating a door, eye, window and other objects suspended Magritte-like in space. His second task was to find and produce quality scripts. This season of Twilight Zone once again turned to the reliable trio of Serling, Matheson and Beaumont. However, Serling’s input was limited this season; he still provided the lion’s-share of the teleplays, but as executive producer he was virtually absent and as host, his artful narrations had to be shot back-to-back against a gray background during his infrequent trips to Los Angeles. Due to complications from a developing brain disease, Beaumont’s input also began to diminish significantly. Additional scripts were commissioned from Earl Hamner, Jr. and Reginald Rose to fill in the gap. With five episodes left in the season, Hirschman received an offer to work on a new NBC series called Espionage and was replaced by Bert Granet, who had previously produced "The Time Element". Among Granet’s first assignments was "On Thursday We Leave for Home", which Serling considered the season's most effective episode. There was an Emmy nomination for cinematography, and a nomination for the Hugo Award. The show returned to its half-hour format for the fall schedule. Beaumont was now out of the picture entirely, contributing scripts only through the ghostwriters Jerry Sohl and John Tomerlin, and after producing only thirteen episodes, Bert Granet left and was replaced by William Froug, with whom Serling had worked on Playhouse 90. Froug made a number of unpopular decisions, first by shelving several scripts purchased under Granet's term (including Matheson’s The Doll, which was nominated for a Writer's Guild Award when finally produced in 1986 on Amazing Stories). Secondly, Froug alienated George Clayton Johnson when he hired Richard deRoy to completely rewrite Johnson’s teleplay Tick of Time, eventually produced as "Ninety Years Without Slumbering". "It makes the plot trivial," complained Johnson of the resulting script. Tick of Time became Johnson’s final submission to The Twilight Zone. Even under these conditions, several episodes were produced that are generally remembered, including "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet", "A Kind of a Stopwatch" and "Living Doll". Although this season received no Emmy recognition, episode number 142, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," a French-produced short film, received the Academy Award for best short film, making Twilight Zone one of only two television series in history (the other being the Canadian news/documentary series the fifth estate) to win both an Emmy and an Oscar. In late January 1964, CBS announced Twilight Zone's cancellation. "For one reason or other, Jim Aubrey decided he was sick of the show", explained Froug. "He claimed that it was too far over budget and that the ratings weren't good enough". Serling countered by telling the Daily Variety that he had "decided to cancel the network". ABC showed interest in bringing the show over to their network under the new name Witches, Warlocks and Werewolves, but Serling wasn't impressed. "[The network executives seem] to prefer weekly ghouls, and we have what appears to be a considerable difference in opinion. I don't mind my show being supernatural, but I don't want to be booked into a graveyard every week". Shortly afterwards Serling sold his 40 percent share in The Twilight Zone to CBS, leaving the show and indeed all projects involving the supernatural behind him until 1969 and the debut of Night Gallery. Being an anthology series, with no recurring characters, The Twilight Zone featured a wide array of guest stars for each episode. Among others, Jack Klugman, Burgess Meredith, James Best, Cliff Robertson, Lee Marvin, and William Shatner appeared in multiple episodes. Several episodes feature early career performances of actors who later became quite famous, such as Peter Falk, Carol Burnett, Robert Duvall, Robert Redford, Elizabeth Montgomery, Dennis Hopper and Charles Bronson. Other episodes feature late career performances by such stars as Franchot Tone, Dana Andrews, Mickey Rooney, Andy Devine, Cedric Hardwicke, Buster Keaton, Ida Lupino and Ed Wynn. Many talented character actors who made successful careers out of guest roles on television programs also were featured on the show, like Albert Salmi, Harold J. Stone, Vito Scotti, Nehemiah Persoff, Nancy Kulp, and John Anderson. The Twilight Zone episodes continue to be broadcast in syndication, are available on DVD, and can be streamed online. Episodes are broadcast most weeknights on the Sci Fi Channel in the United States. On every Fourth of July and New Year's Eve, SciFi airs a marathon of The Twilight Zone. The Twilight Zone was released on Region 1 DVD for the first time by Image Entertainment. The various releases include: 43 volumes of 3 to 4 episodes each (released December 29, 1998 - June 12, 2001), five 9-disc Collection DVD sets (released December 3, 2002 - February 25, 2003), season sets (released December 28, 2004 - December 26, 2005), The Twilight Zone: The Complete Definitive Collection (released October 3, 2006), Treasures of The Twilight Zone (3 episode compilation released November 24, 1997), More Treasures of The Twilight Zone (3 episode compilation released November 24, 1998), The Twilight Zone: 40th Anniversary Gift Pack (19 episode compilation released September 21, 1999), and The Twilight Zone: Gold Collection, a 49 disc set of the entire series, released by V3 Media on December 2, 2002. Only 2,500 sets were made. Episodes of The Twilight Zone can be seen free of charge on the official CBS website. There have been two revivals of the show:

The New Twilight Zone (1985-1989): It was Serling's decision to sell his share of the series back to the network that eventually allowed for a Twilight Zone revival. As an in-house production, CBS stood to earn more money producing The Twilight Zone than it could by purchasing a new series produced by an outside company. Even so, the network was slow to consider a revival, shooting down offers from the original production team of Rod Serling and Buck Houghton and later from American filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. Their hesitation stemmed from concerns familiar to the original series: Twilight Zone had never been the breakaway hit CBS wanted, why should they expect it to do better in a second run? The answers to this question began to surface in the early 1980s, as a new generation of writers and directors emerged from the very teenagers who formed the core of Twilight Zone's original audience. First came The Twilight Zone Companion by Marc Scott Zicree, an in-depth look into the history of the series that won critical accolade, a 1983 nomination for the American Book Award and a place on best-seller lists across the nation. Also encouraging were the new numbers from Nielsen and the box office alike. Despite lukewarm response to “Twilight Zone: The Movie,” John Landis, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, and George Miller's theatrical homage to the original series, CBS gave The New Twilight Zone a greenlight in 1984 under the supervision of Carla Singer, then Vice President of Drama Development. While the show didn't match the enduring popularity of the original, it did develop its own cult following and some episodes, including the love story "Her Pilgrim Soul" and J. Michael Straczynski's deeply moving "Dream Me a Life," were widely acclaimed.

Second revival (2002–2003): A second low-budget revival was attempted by UPN in 2002, with narration provided by Forest Whitaker and theme music by Jonathan Davis (of the rock group Korn). Broadcast in an hour format with two half-hour stories, it was cancelled after one season. The critical and audience reaction to this revival was generally not very good, although reruns continue to air in syndication and in the summer of 2008 on MyNetwork TV. Noteworthy episodes featured Jason Alexander as Death wanting to retire from harvesting souls, Lou Diamond Phillips as a swimming pool cleaner being shot repeatedly in his dreams, Susanna Thompson as a woman whose stated wish results in an "upgrading" of her family, Usher as a policeman being bothered by telephone calls from beyond the grave, and Katherine Heigl playing nanny to an infant Adolf Hitler. The series also includes remakes and updates of stories presented in the original Twilight Zone television series, including the famous "The Eye of the Beholder." One of the updates, "The Monsters Are On Maple Street", is a modernized version of the classic episode similarly called "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street". The original show was about the paranoia surrounding a neighborhood-wide blackout. In the course of the episode, somebody suggests an alien invasion being the cause of the blackouts, and that one of the neighbors may be an alien. The anti-alien hysteria is an allegory for the anti-communist paranoia of the time, and the 2003 remake, starring Andrew McCarthy, replaces aliens with terrorists. The show also contains a follow-up episode to the events of the original episode "It's a Good Life." Bill Mumy returned to play the adult version of Anthony, the demonic child he had played in the original story, with Mumy's daughter, Liliana, appearing as Anthony's daughter, a more benevolent but even more powerful child. Cloris Leachman also returned as Anthony's mother. Mumy went on to serve as screenwriter for other episodes in the revival. The Twilight Zone revival series tended to address contemporary issues head-on; i.e. terrorism, racism, gender roles, and sexuality. Other guest stars include, but not limited to: Jessica Simpson, Christopher Titus, Eriq La Salle, Jason Bateman, Method Man, Linda Cardellini, Jaime Pressly, Jeremy Sisto, Molly Sims, Portia de Rossi, Christopher McDonald, Jeremy Piven, Ethan Embry, Shannon Elizabeth, Jonathan Jackson, Amber Tamblyn, Dylan Walsh and Elizabeth Berkley. The complete series was released on DVD by New Line in a six disc boxset on September 7, 2004.

There were also two films made based on the show: one a theatrical motion picture, the other a TV movie:

“Twilight Zone: The Movie”: “Twilight Zone: The Movie” is a 1983 feature film produced by Steven Spielberg. It starred Dan Aykroyd, Albert Brooks, Vic Morrow, John Lithgow and Scatman Crothers. The film remade three classic episodes of the original series and included one original story. John Landis directed the prologue and the first segment, Steven Spielberg directed the second, Joe Dante the third, and George Miller directed the final segment. The Landis-directed episode is possibly best known for the helicopter accident that resulted in the deaths of Morrow and two child actors during filming. Leonardo DiCaprio, a fan of The Twilight Zone, is planning to make a new movie with Warner Bros. However, unlike the first film, which was an anthology feature, it will be a big-budget, SFX-laden continuous story possibly based on classic episodes of the series such as "The Eye of the Beholder," "To Serve Man," or any of the 92 scripts written by Rod Serling, to which Warner Bros. owns the rights.

“The Twilight Zone: Rod Serling's Lost Classics” (1994): In the early 1990s, Richard Matheson and Carol Serling produced an outline for a two-hour made-for-TV movie which would feature Matheson adaptations of three yet-unfilmed Rod Serling short stories. Outlines for such a production were rejected by CBS until early 1994, when Serling's widow discovered a complete shooting script ("Where the Dead Are") authored by her late husband while rummaging through their garage. Serling showed the forgotten script to producers Michael O'Hara and Laurence Horowitz, who were significantly impressed by it. "I had a pile of scripts, which I usually procrastinate about reading. But I read this one right away and, after 30 pages, called my partner and said, "I love it," recalled O'Hara. "This is pure imagination, a period piece, literate—some might say wordy. If Rod Serling's name weren't on it, it wouldn't have a chance at getting made." Eager to capitalize on Serling's celebrity status as a writer, CBS packaged "Where the Dead Are" with Matheson's adaptation of "The Theatre," debuting as a two-hour feature on the night of May 19, 1994, under the name Twilight Zone: Rod Serling's Lost Classics. The title represents a misnomer, as both stories were conceived long after Twilight Zone's cancellation. Written just months before Serling's death, "Where the Dead Are" starred Patrick Bergin as a 19th century doctor who stumbles upon a mad scientist's medical experiments with immortality. "The Theatre" starred Amy Irving and Gary Cole as a couple who visit a cineplex, only to discover that the feature presentation is their own lives. James Earl Jones provided opening and closing narrations. Critical response was mixed. Gannett News Service described it as "taut and stylish, a reminder of what can happen when fine actors are given great words." USA Today was less impressed, even suggesting that Carol Serling "should have left these two unproduced mediocrities in the garage where she found them." Ultimately ratings proved insufficient to justify a proposed sequel featuring three Matheson-adapted scripts.

In 2002, episodes of the original The Twilight Zone were adapted for radio, with Stacy Keach taking Serling's role as narrator. Western Publishing published a Twilight Zone comic book, first under their Dell Comics imprint for 4 issues, one in 1961 and 3 further issues in 1962, with the first two published as part of their long running Four Color anthology series as issue numbers 1173 and 1288, and then two further one shots numbered separately in Dell's unique fashion as 01-860-207 and 12-860-210 (numbered as 01-860-210 on the inside) respectively. Western then restarted the series under their Gold Key imprint with a formal issue #1, which ran 92 issues from 1962 to 1979, with the final issue being published in 1982. Several of the stories would be reprinted in their Mystery Comics Digest, which mentioned the title on the covers. A wide range of artists worked on the title, including Jack Sparling, Reed Crandall, Lee Elias, George Evans, Russ Jones, Joe Orlando, Jerry Robinson, Mike Sekowsky, Dan Spiegle, Frank Thorne, and Alex Toth. In 1990, NOW Comics published a new comic series with using the title logo from the 1985 revival. The publisher made great efforts to sign established sci-fi/fantasy writers, including Harlan Ellison, adapting his story "Crazy as a Soup Sandwich." Beginning in 2001, Gauntlet Press began publishing collections of original scripts from The Twilight Zone by Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, and Rod Serling. A ten-volume signed, limited edition series of all 92 of Rod Serling's scripts, authorized by his wife, Carol Serling, began yearly publication in 2004. Many of the scripts contain handwritten edits by Serling himself and differ in significant ways from the aired versions; most volumes contain an alternate version of a selected script. The script for "Monsters Due On Maple Street" has been published into 7th grade reading books in the form of a play. Live theater productions of the original episodes can be seen in Los Angeles and Seattle, where Theater Schmeater has continuously produced a late night series, "The Twilight Zone — Live" with permission of the Serling estate, since 1996. In 2005, 4 Letter Entertainment produced “Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up?” in Los Angeles. In 1993, Midway released a widebody pinball game, Twilight Zone (based on the original TV series). After his Addams Family pinball became the best selling pinball machine of all time, Midway gave designer Pat Lawlor creative control over the game. The game uses Golden Earring's 1982 hit song "Twilight Zone" as its theme song. The game sold 15,235 units. A text adventure based video game of The Twilight Zone for the PC and Amiga was also published in 1988 by Gigabit Systems Inc. The game has been panned by players for various problems. The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror is a theme park attraction at the Disney's Hollywood Studios in Florida, Disney's California Adventure in California and Walt Disney Studios Paris in Paris. Tokyo DisneySea, Japan also has a version, but it does not carry on the Twilight Zone theme, due to constraints in copyrights for the Oriental Land Company, owner and operator of the Tokyo parks.

Submitted for your approval: A man. A TV writer. His name: Rod Serling. Mr. Serling has won Emmys for writing serious teleplays like 1955’s “Patterns” for Kraft Television Theater and 1956’s “Requiem For A Heavyweight” for Playhouse 90 and is considered by many to the single finest drama of TV’s Golden Age. However, this Mr. Serling has decided to turn his energies to producing and writing a science fiction show in an era when sci-fi is considered comic book stuff. Mr. Serling is even asked by Mike Wallace in a famous 1959 interview, “You’ve given up writing anything important for television, right?” However, Mr. Serling has something up his sleeve with this comic book stuff. Many TV writers back then and today spend their entire careers trying to get critics to take them seriously; Mr. Serling's genius is to create a serious show and convince people that it was frivolous. This anthology show Mr. Serling creates has episodes that are mini masterworks of pulp storytelling and is so deeply lodged in the craniums of the baby-boom generation that you can still get a nervous laughter out of anyone just by imitating its pinprick theme music. Each episode is a tautly written morality play with supernatural and sci-fi elements that tease out the characters’ good or evil nature. For example: A man who despises machines is attacked by his home appliances. An antisocial bookworm survives a nuclear holocaust and has all the time he needs to read…until his glasses break. A woman has multiple plastic surgeries in order to make herself the standard of “beauty” in a world full of ugly people. A society is visited by a group of aliens who want to serve them…as their dinners. These episodes are comments on conformity, McCarthyism, and the threat of nuclear war, among other (often unnoticed) subjects. These episodes are neither self-important nor editorial. Many of these episodes were about more philosophical conflicts, or just old-fashioned sci-fi mind-blowers. And, our Mr. Serling has chosen the science fiction genre because he has no choice. He has long strained against the straightjacket of TV’s blandness: After a Studio One drama he has written about the Senate has been watered down, Mr. Serling groused, “I probably would have had a much more adult play had I…put it in the year 2057 and peopled the Senate with robots.” This is why Mr. Serling has chosen science fiction: because with it he can get away what he wants to write. It is the only place he can be subversive without scaring off sponsors. And, Mr. Serling lessons will live on in other shows like Battlestar Galactica or The X-Files: if you've got a point to make, sometimes it's better to let the monsters and robots do the talking. And, if you are wondering just what is this show Mr. Serling has created, then you will have to look for it in The Twilight Zone.

[Hulk With A Mustache]

Tomorrow, numbers 8 and 7. Here are the hints:

A hospital on the move in a dangerous place, and a cop show that is depressed.

[The Lodger]

Roots? I thought it was a mini series, are you counting those? Thanks for ranking The Wire so high, but seeing it under Sesame Street, well, it makes sense. I do think that Hill Street Blues is one of the best Cop shows, but I still think the Wire tops it, oh well.

[Hulk With A Mustache]

Aug 4, 2008 22:52:02 GMT -5 The Lodger said:

Roots? I thought it was a mini series, are you counting those? Thanks for ranking The Wire so high, but seeing it under Sesame Street, well, it makes sense. I do think that Hill Street Blues is one of the best Cop shows, but I still think the Wire tops it, oh well.

As I said in the entry, Roots counts because the miniseries is as much a part of TV as regular TV shows; and it was so important that to not put it on the list would be a crime.

[Hulk With A Mustache]

Anyway, here is number 8:

8. M*A*S*H



Genre: Medical Drama, Dramedy, Black Comedy/
Created by: H. Richard Hornberger.
Executive Producer(s): Larry Gelbart and Gene Reynolds.
Starring: Alan Alda (Captain Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce), Loretta Swit, (Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan), Jamie Farr (Corporal, later Sergeant, Maxwell Klinger), William Christopher (Lieutenant, later Captain, Francis Mulcahy), Wayne Rogers (Captain “Trapper” John MacIntyre 1972–1975), McLean Stevenson (Lt. Colonel Henry Blake 1972–1975), Larry Linville (Major Frank Burns 1972–1977), Gary Burghoff (Corporal Walter Eugene “Radar” O’Reilly 1972–1979), Harry Morgan (Colonel Sherman Potter 1975–1983), Mike Farrell (Captain B.J. Hunnicutt 1975–1983), and David Ogden Stiers (Major Charles Emerson Winchester III 1977-1983).
Country of Origin: United States.
Number of Seasons: 11.
Number of Episodes: 251.
Running Time: 24-25 minutes.
Original Channel: CBS.
Original Run: September 17, 1972 – February 28, 1983.
Spinoffs: Three spinoffs, well two official spinoffs and one unofficial. The official ones are AfterMASH, which featured the characters of Father Mulcahy, Sherman Potter, and Maxwell Klinger working in a Midwestern hospital and lasted from 1983-1985; and W*A*L*T*E*R, a pilot made in 1984 for the character of Walter “Radar” O’Reilly, in which he moves to St. Louis and becomes a police officer. The unofficial spinoff is Trapper John, M.D., a show that lasted from 1979 to 1986 and focuses on the character of “Trapper” John McIntyre, who is played by Pernell Roberts rather than Wayne Rogers, who played him in the show. Legally, the show is considered a spinoff of the original movie “MASH,” rather than the M*A*S*H television show. This is due to a court case in which the producers of the series had sought royalty payments on the grounds that Trapper John, M.D. was a spinoff of their television series. However, the court found that the series was a spinoff of the original movie. As a result, the series producers did not receive any royalties from Trapper John, M.D.

M*A*S*H was a weekly half-hour situation comedy, sometimes described as “black comedy” or a "dramedy," because of the dramatic subject material often presented (the term "dramedy," although coined in 1978, was not in common usage until after M*A*S*H had gone off the air). The show was an ensemble piece revolving around key personnel in a United States Army Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH; the asterisks in the name are meaningless, introduced in the novel) in the Korean War (1950–1953). The 4077th MASH was just one of several surgical units in Korea. As the show developed, the writing took on more of a moralistic tone. Richard Hooker, who wrote the book on which the show (and the film version) was based, noted that Hawkeye was far more liberal in the show (in one of the sequel books, Hawkeye in fact makes reference to “kicking the bejesus out of lefties just to stay in shape”). While the show was mostly comedy, there were many episodes of a more serious tone. Stories were both plot- and character-driven. Most of the characters were draftees, with dramatic tension often occurring between them and "Regular Army" characters, either among the cast (Swit as Houlihan, Morgan as Potter) or as guest stars (including Eldon Quick, Herb Voland, Mary Wickes, and Tim O'Connor). A letter to TV Guide written by a former MASH doctor in about 1973 stated that the most insane jokes and idiotic pranks on the show were the most true to life, including Klinger's crossdressing. The hellish reality of the MASH units encouraged this behavior out of a desperate need for something to laugh at. M*A*S*H maintained a relatively constant ensemble cast, with four characters, Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce (Alda), Father Francis Mulcahy (Christopher), Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan (Swit), and Maxwell Q. Klinger (Farr), appearing on the show for all eleven of the seasons in which it ran. Several other main characters who left or joined the show midway through its original run supplemented these four, and numerous guest stars and one-time characters supplemented all of them. Only four characters left the show. The characters “Trapper” John McIntyre (Rogers), and Henry Blake (Stevenson) were written off the show after the third season; both characters were sent home, but Blake’s plane crashed while over the Sea Of Japan. The character Frank Burns (Linville) was written off the show after the fifth season; his character was sent home on a Section 8, a medical discharge for anyone suffering mental illness, after Margaret, whom he was in love with, married another man and had a mental breakdown due to a broken heart. The character Radar O’Reilly (Burghoff) was written out of the show during the eighth season; he was given a hardship discharge after his uncle Ed died. Also, three characters were added to the show to replace the departing ones. B.J. Hunnicutt (Farrell) and Sherman Potter (Morgan) joined the show in the fourth season to replace “Trapper” John and Blake respectively. Burns was replaced by Charles Emerson Winchester III (Stiers). Radar was the only character not replaced by a new character; his position was replaced by Klinger. Throughout the series, Klinger frequently introduces himself by his full name, Maxwell Q. Klinger, but never says what the Q. stands for. B.J.'s real name is never given. In one episode, Hawkeye goes to extreme lengths to learn what "B. J." stands for, but all official paperwork concerning his friend claims that B. J. really is his first name. Toward the end of the episode, B. J. explains "My mother, Bea Hunnicutt and my father, Jay Hunnicutt.", and claims that this is the reason for his odd name. A recurring joke in that episode is that upon being asked what B. J. stands for, B. J. merely replies "Anything you want." Frank Burns had three middle names during his time on the show: W., Marion, and D. (as in, "Franklin D. Whitebread marries Miss Cynthia Soon-to-be-Frigid") Radar's first name is stated as Walter and once, in "Fade In, Fade Out", he introduces himself by his full name to Charles Emerson Winchester, III, as "Walter Eugene O'Reilly." The book says his name is J. Robespierre and his first name is not revealed in the film. Throughout the run of the series, any "generic" nurses (nurse characters who had a line or two, but were minor supporting characters otherwise) were generally given the names "Nurse Able", "Nurse Baker", or "Nurse Charlie". These names stem from the phonetic alphabet used by the military and ham radio operators at the time. During the time period of the Korean War, the letters A, B, and C in the phonetic alphabet were Able, Baker, and Charlie (since then, the standard has been updated, and A and B are now Alpha and Bravo). In later seasons, it became more common for a real character name to be created, especially as several of the nurse actors became semi-regulars. For example, Kellye Nakahara played both "Able" and "Charlie" characters in season three before becoming the semi-regular "Nurse Kellye"; on the other hand, Judy Farrell (then Mrs. Mike Farrell) played Nurse Able in eight episodes, including the series finale. By the time the series ended, three of the regulars were promoted: Klinger (Jamie Farr) from Corporal to Sergeant, and Father Mulcahy (William Christopher) from Lieutenant to Captain. Frank Burns (Larry Linville) was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel when he was shipped back to the US following Margaret's marriage. (Farr and Christopher also saw their names move from the closing credits of the show, to the opening credits.) Radar O'Reilly was fraudulently "promoted" through a machination of Hawkeye and B.J. to Second Lieutenant, but disliked officer's duties, and asked them to "bust" him back to Corporal. It was Mike Farrell who asked to have his character's daughter's name be Erin, after his real-life daughter (the character's name was originally going to be Melissa). When B.J. spoke on the telephone on-camera, Erin or his then-wife Judy were on the other end. Three MASH 4077 staff members suffered fatalities on the show: Colonel Blake, when his plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan; an ambulance driver, O'Donnell, in a traffic accident; and a nurse, Millie Carpenter, by a landmine. Though actually an imaginary person made up by Hawkeye Pierce to provide money for Sister Teresa's orphanage, Captain Tuttle was reportedly killed at the front when he came to the attention of too many people. Hawkeye provided him a very ironic eulogy (“Tuttle”). Among those wounded were Hawkeye Pierce ("Hawkeye", "Lend A Hand", "Out of Sight Out of Mind" and "Comrades In Arms (Part I)"), Radar O'Reilly ("Fallen Idol"), B.J. Hunnicutt and Max Klinger ("Operation Friendship"), Klinger again ("It happened One Night"), Father Mulcahy ("Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen"), and Sherman Potter ("Dear Ma"). Henry Blake was injured three times - once by a disgruntled chopper pilot ("Cowboy"), once by friendly fire ("The Army-Navy Game"), and in season 3, episode 15 ("Bombed"), Henry is injured when the latrine he is in is blown up. The gag of Blake being caught in a exploding latrine is also in episode "Cowboy." At least three personnel suffered emotional breakdowns: Hawkeye Pierce ("Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen"), Frank Burns ("Fade Out, Fade In (Part 1)" and "Fade Out, Fade In (Part 2)"), and B.J. Hunnicutt ("Period of Adjustment"). Sherman Potter had two near-nervous breakdowns, once when he almost lost a patient and once while he was given information on treating burn victims. There were also several recurring characters on the show:

Nurse Kealani Kellye, a recurring character in the 4077th appearing in 82 episodes, played by Kellye Nakahara.

Jeff Maxwell played the bumbling Pvt. Igor Straminsky in 66 episodes. In his earlier appearances, he was the camp cook's aide, complaining that despite not actually cooking the food, he still had to listen to everyone's gripes about it. He was often the target of Hawkeye's wrath because of the terrible food and the recipient of his "river of liver and ocean of fish" rant in "Adam's Ribs."

Supply sergeant for the 4077th, Staff Sgt Zelmo Zale, was portrayed by Johnny Haymer. He made his first appearance in the Season 2 episode, "For Want of a Boot", and his final appearance in the Season 8 episode, "Good-Bye Radar". Zale's name is mentioned for the final time in "Yessir, That's Our Baby."

G. W. Bailey played the perpetually lazy Staff Sgt. Luther Rizzo in 14 episodes.

Dr. Sidney Freedman, a psychiatrist, was played by Alan Arbus who appeared twelve times (once as Dr. Milton Freedman).

Col. (Sam) Flagg, a paranoid intelligence officer, was played by Edward Winter and visited the unit six times.

Marcia Strassman played nurse Margie Cutler six times. She disappeared after episode “Ceasefire.”

Herb Voland appeared four times as Henry Blake's commander, Brigadier General Clayton.

G. Wood appeared three times as Brigadier General Hammond, the same role he played in the movie.

Robert F. Simon appeared three times as Major General Mitchell.

Loudon Wainwright III appeared three times as Captain Calvin Spaulding, who was normally seen playing his guitar and singing.

Eldon Quick appeared three times as two nearly identical characters, Capt. Sloan and Capt. Pratt, officers who were dedicated to paperwork and bureaucracy.

Sgt. Jack Scully, played by Joshua Bryant, appeared in three episodes as a love interest of Margaret Houlihan.

Pat Morita appeared twice as Capt. Sam Pak of the Republic of Korea Army.

Sorrell Booke appeared twice as Brigadier General Bradley Barker.

Robert Symonds appeared twice as Col. Horace Baldwin.

Robert Alda, Alan Alda's father, appeared twice as Maj. Borelli, a visiting surgeon, "The Consultant" and "Lend a Hand." According to Alan Alda, "Lend a Hand" was his way of reconciling with his dad; he was always giving suggestions to Robert for their vaudeville act, and in "Lend a Hand" Robert's character was always giving Hawkeye suggestions. It was Robert's idea for the doctors to cooperate as "Dr. Right" and "Dr. Left" at the end of that episode, signifying both a reconciliation of their characters and in real life as well. Antony Alda, Alan Alda's half-brother, also appeared in "Lend a Hand" as Corporal Jarvis.

Lt. Col. Donald Penobscot appeared twice (played by two different actors), once as Margaret's fiancé and once as her husband.

Sgt. "Sparky" Pryor, a friend of Radar and Max, was a person whom people appeared to talk to on the telephone. He was seen only once, played by Dennis Fimple, in Tuttle (Season 1, Episode 15), but was sometimes faintly heard on the phone when he yelled.

Sal Viscuso and Todd Susman played the camp's anonymous P.A. system announcer throughout the series. This unseen character broke the fourth Wall only once, in the episode "Welcome to Korea" (4-1) when introducing the regular cast members. Normally he just tells the camp about the incoming wounded with a sense of humor. Both Viscuso and Susman appeared onscreen as other characters in at least one episode each.

At least 18 guest stars made appearances as multiple characters:

Hamilton Camp appeared twice. First as the insane Corporal "Boots" Miller in "Major Topper" and again as a film distributor named Frankenheimer in "The Moon Is Not Blue."

Dennis Dugan appeared twice; as O.R. orderly Pvt. McShane in 3.20, "Love and Marriage" and again in 11.11, "Strange Bedfellows" as Col. Potter's philandering son-in-law, Robert (Bob) Wilson.

Tim O'Connor appeared as wounded artillery officer Colonel Spiker, and as visiting surgeon, Norm Traeger. Both characters were noticeably at odds with Hawkeye.

Dick O'Neill appeared three times (each time in a different U.S. service branch); as a Navy Admiral Cox, as an Army Brigadier General Prescott, and as a Marine Colonel Pitts.

Harry Morgan played both the 4077th's second beloved C.O. (Col. Sherman T. Potter), and the mentally unstable Major General Bartford Hamilton Steele in the show's third season in the episode "The General Flipped at Dawn."

Soon-Tek Oh appeared five times; twice as North Korean POWs (in 4.6, "The Bus", and 8.10, "The Yalu Brick Road"), once as a North Korean doctor (5.9, "The Korean Surgeon"), once as O.R. orderly Mr. Kwang ("Love and Marriage") and once as a South Korean interpreter who posed as a North Korean POW (11.3, "Foreign Affairs"). (Soon-Tek Oh is one of the few Korean actors to play a Korean on MASH; most of the other "Korean" characters were played by either Japanese or Chinese actors.)

Robert Karnes appeared twice: once as a Colonel in 4.1 and as a General in 6.4.

Clyde Kusatsu appeared four times; twice as a Korean bartender in the Officer's Club, once as a Chinese-American soldier, and once as a Japanese-American surgeon.

Robert Ito played a hood who works for the black market in 1.2, "To Market, To Market", and a North Korean soldier, disguised as a South Korean, looking for supplies, in "The Korean Surgeon."

Mako appeared four times; once as a Chinese doctor, once as a South Korean doctor, once as a South Korean officer, and once as a North Korean soldier.

Jerry Fujikawa appeared as crooked Korean matchmaker Dr. Pak in "Love and Marriage", as Trapper John's tailor in 3.3, "Officer of the Day", and as an acupuncturist named Wu in 8.24 "Back Pay."

John Orchard starred as the Australian anesthetist, Ugly John, in the first season, and later appeared in 8.13 as a disgruntled and drunken Australian MP Muldoon, who has an arrangement with Rosie the barkeep: he takes bribes (in the form of booze in is "coffee" mug) to "look the other way."

Richard Lee Sung appeared ten times as a local Korean who often had merchandise (and in one case, real estate) he wished to sell to the hospital staff; sold a backwards running watch to Major Burns.

Jack Soo appeared twice; once as black market boss Charlie Lee with whom Hawkeye and Trapper made a trade for supplies in "To Market, To Market", and in "Payday" as a peddler who sold Frank two sets of pearls, one real, the other fake.

Ted Gehring appeared twice: in 2.12 as moronic Supply Officer Major Morris who refuses to let the MASH doctors have a badly needed incubator, and in 7.6 as corrupt supply NCO Sgt Rhoden.

Eldon Quik appeared three times, once as a finance officer and twice as Captain Sloan.

Edward Winter appeared as an Intelligence Officer named "Halloran" in 2/13, and in 6 episodes as Colonel Flagg (although Halloran may have been one of Flagg's numerous and often mid-episode changing aliases).

Shizuko Hoshi appeared at least twice: once as "Rosie" of "Rosie's Bar" in episode 3.13, "Mad Dogs and Servicemen," and once in 4.18, "Hawkeye," as the mother in a Korean family.

John Fujioka, who played the uncredited role of a Japanese Golf Pro in the movie, appeared three times in the series. The first time was in "Dear Ma" (1975) as Colonel Kim, the second time was in "The Tooth Shall Set You Free" (1982) as Duc Phon Jong and the last time he played a peasant in "Picture This" (1982).

Stuart Margolin appeared twice. First as psychiatrist Captain Phillip Sherman in Season 1's "Bananas, Crackers and Nuts" (1.07) and again as plastic surgeon Major Stanley 'Stosh' Robbins in Season 2's "Operation Noselift" (2.18).

While most of the characters from the movie carried over to the series, only three actors appeared in both: Gary Burghoff (Radar O'Reilly) and G. Wood (General Hammond) reprised their movie roles in the series (though Wood appeared in only three episodes). Timothy Brown (credited as "Tim Brown") played "Cpl. Judson" in the movie and Spearchucker Jones in the series. Two of the cast members, Jamie Farr (Klinger) and Alan Alda (Hawkeye Pierce) served in the U.S. Army in Korea in the 1950s after the Korean War. The dog tags Farr wears on the show are his actual dogtags. Farr served as part of a USO tour with Red Skelton. Gary Burghoff's left hand is slightly deformed, and he took great pains to hide or de-emphasize it during filming. He did this by always holding something (like a clipboard), or keeping that hand in his pocket. Most of the M*A*S*H main cast guested on Murder She Wrote. Wayne Rogers made five appearances as roguish PI Charlie Garrat. David Ogden Stiers appeared three times as a Civil War-infused college lecturer and once as a classical music radio host. G. W. Bailey appeared twice as a New York City cop. Larry Linville made two appearances as a cop who was sure that Jessica was CIA. Harry Morgan appeared once in a cleverly cut episode that mixed with a film he had once been in. William Christopher made an appearance as a murderous bird-watcher. Jamie Farr appeared in two episodes, once as a hopeful new publisher for Jessica Fletcher and again with Loretta Swit (she played as a modern artist framed for murder). Mike Farrell appeared as a Senate hopeful. The 4077th actually consisted of two separate sets. An outdoor set, located in the mountains near Malibu, California in Calabasas, Los Angeles County, California was used for most exterior and tent scenes for every season. The indoor set, located on a sound stage at Fox Studios, was used for the indoor scenes for the run of the series. Later, after the indoor set was renovated to permit many of the "outdoor" scenes to be filmed there, both sets were used for exterior shooting as script requirements dictated (for example, night scenes were far easier to film on the sound stage, but scenes at the chopper pad required using the ranch). Just as the series was wrapping production, a major brush fire destroyed the entire set on October 9, 1982. The fire was written into the final episode as a forest fire caused by enemy incendiary bombs. The Malibu location is today known as Malibu Creek State Park. Formerly called the Fox Ranch, and owned by 20th Century Fox Studios until the 1980s, the site today is returning to a natural state, and marked by a rusted Jeep and an ambulance used in the show. On February 23, 2008, series stars Mike Farrell, Loretta Swit, and William Christopher along with producers Gene Reynolds and Burt Metcalfe and prolific M*A*S*H director Charles S. Dubin reunited at the set to celebrate its partial restoration. The rebuilt iconic signpost is now displayed on weekends along with tent markers and maps and photos of the set. The state park is open to the public. It was also the location where the film “How Green Was My Valley” (1941) and the Planet of the Apes TV series (1974) were filmed, among other productions. When M*A*S*H was filming its last episode, the producers were contacted by the Smithsonian Institution, which asked to be given a part of the set. The producers quickly agreed and sent the tent, signposts and contents of "The Swamp," which was home to Hawkeye, BJ, Trapper, Charles and Frank during the course of the show. The Smithsonian has The Swamp on display to this day. Originally found on the Ranch, Radar's teddy bear, once housed at the Smithsonian, was sold at auction July 29, 2005, for $11,800. M*A*S*H was the first American network series to use the phrase "son of a bitch", in the 8th season episode ("Guerilla, My Dreams"), and there was brief partial nudity, (notably Gary Burghoff's buttocks in "The Sniper" and Hawkeye in one of the Dear Dad episodes.) A different innovation was the show's producers not wanting a laugh track as the network did. They compromised with a "chuckle track", played only occasionally. DVD releases of the series mostly allow viewers a no-laugh-track option. In his blog, writer Ken Levine revealed that on one occasion when the cast offered too many nit-picky "notes" on a script, he and his writing partner changed the script to a "cold show" - one set during the frigid Korean winter. The cast then had to stand around barrel fires in parkas at the Malibu ranch when the temperatures neared 100 degrees. Levine says, "This happened maybe twice, and we never got a ticky tack note again." The helicopters used on the series were model H-13 "Sioux" (military designation and nickname of the Bell-47 civilian model). The Jeeps used were "Willy's" Jeeps, while the Ambulances were Dodges and the bus used to transport wounded was a 1960 Chevy bus. The series had several unique episodes, which differed in tone, structure and style from the rest of the series, and were significant departures from the typical sitcom or dramedy plot. Some of these episodes include:

The "letter episodes", which are flashback episodes narrated by a character as if they are writing a letter: Hawkeye writes to his Dad ("Dear Dad", "Dear Dad Again", "Dear Dad...Three", and he tape records a message in "A Full Rich Day"); Potter writes to his wife ("Dear Mildred"); BJ writes home to his wife ("Dear Peggy"); Radar writes to his mother ("Dear Ma") and tries his hand at creative writing ("The Most Unforgettable Characters"); Sidney writes to Sigmund Freud ("Dear Sigmund"); Winchester "writes" home by recording an audio message ("The Winchester Tapes"); Winchester's houseboy—a North Korean spy—writes to his superiors ("Dear Comrade"); Father Mulcahy writes to his sister, a nun ("Dear Sis"); Klinger writes home to his uncle ("Dear Uncle Abdul"); and the main characters all write to children in Crabapple Cove ("Letters").

The "mail call episodes"; "Mail Call", "Mail Call Again", and "Mail Call Three". In these episodes the members of the 4077th receive letters and packages from home.

"O.R." (originally aired October 8, 1974), which takes place entirely within the confines of the operating room and preop/postop ward (and was the first episode to omit the laugh track completely).

"Bulletin Board" (originally aired January 14, 1975), an episode showing various camp activities as seen on notices found on the camp bulletin board. These include a sex lecture by Henry, a letter written by Trapper, a Shirley Temple movie, and a picnic.
"Hawkeye" (originally aired January 13, 1976), in which Hawkeye is taken in by a Korean family (who understand no English) after a jeep accident far from the 4077th, and he carries on what amounts to a 23-minute monologue in an attempt to remain conscious. Alan Alda is the only cast member to appear in the episode.

"The Interview" (originally aired February 24, 1976), which is a sort of mockumentary about the 4077th. It is shot in black and white and presented as a 1950s television broadcast, with the cast partially improvising their responses to interviewer Clete Roberts' questions. Roberts returned for "Our Finest Hour" (originally aired October 9, 1978), which interspersed new black and white interview segments with color clips from previous episodes.

"Point of View" (originally aired November 20, 1978), which is shot from the point of view of a soldier who is wounded in the throat and taken to the 4077th for treatment.

"Life Time" (originally aired November 26, 1979), which takes place in real-time as the surgeons perform an operation that must be completed within 22 minutes (as a clock in the corner of the screen counts down the time).

"Dreams" (originally aired February 18, 1980), in which the dreams of the overworked and sleep-deprived members of the 4077th are visually depicted, revealing their fears, yearnings, and frustrations. This episode was conceived by James Jay Rubinfier and co-written with Alan Alda. The episode received two prestigious writing honors: The Humanitas Prize (1980), and a Writers' Guild of America nomination for episodic television writing in the dramatic category, which was a first as M*A*S*H received WGA nominations in both comedy and drama categories that same year.

"A War for All Seasons" (originally aired December 29, 1980), which compresses an entire year in the life of the 4077th into a single episode.

"Follies of the Living—Concerns of the Dead" (originally aired January 4, 1982), in which a dead soldier's ghost (Kario Salem) wanders around the compound, and only a feverish Klinger is able to see him or speak with him.

"When There's a Will, There's a War" (originally aired February 22, 1982), which features a series of flashbacks as Hawkeye recalls his friends' most endearing qualities while writing his last will and testament during heavy fighting at a front-line aid station.

During the first season, Hawkeye and Trapper's bunk mate was an African American character called Spearchucker Jones, played by actor Timothy Brown, who appeared in the film version as a neurosurgeon. The character disappeared after 1.11 "Germ Warfare"; there is no record of African-American doctors serving in Korea. Another actor, George Morgan, played Father Mulcahy only in the pilot episode. By season three, McLean Stevenson was growing unhappy playing a supporting role to Alan Alda and Wayne Rogers. Midway through the season, he informed the producers he wanted out of the show. With ample time to prepare a “Goodbye Henry” show, it was decided that Henry Blake would be discharged and sent home for the Season Three finale, which aired on Tuesday March 18, 1975. In the final scene of his last episode, “Abyssinia, Henry,” Radar tearfully reports that Henry's plane had been shot down over the Sea of Japan, and he was killed. The scene was the last one shot of the entire episode, and the page of script that reveals that development was only given to the cast moments before cameras rolled. The scene had to be shot twice due to a noise off camera, the actors had to recompose and act shocked at the news a second time. Up until then, they were going to get a message that Blake had arrived safely home. Although this is now regarded as a classic episode, at the time it garnered a barrage of angry mail from fans. As a result, the creative team behind M*A*S*H pledged that no other characters would leave the show in such a tragic fashion. Wayne Rogers (Trapper John McIntyre) was planning to return for Season Four but also had a disliking of his supporting role to Alda and because of his contract, left the series. Though Rogers had been threatening to leave the series since Season One, his departure was unexpected, as compared to that of McLean Stevenson. In addition, Rogers felt his character was never given any real importance and that all the focus was on Alda's character. Mike Farrell (Rogers’ replacement) was hastily recruited during the 1975 summer production hiatus. Actor Pernell Roberts later would assume the role of a middle-aged John "Trapper" McIntyre, in the seven-year run of "Trapper John, M.D." As a result of two of the three leads having departed the series, Season Four was, in many ways, a major turning point for M*A*S*H. At the beginning of the fourth season, Hawkeye was informed by Radar that Trapper had been discharged while Hawkeye was on leave, and audiences did not see Trapper's departure, while B. J. Hunnicutt came in as Trapper's replacement. Trapper, however, was described by Radar as being so jubilant over his release that "he got drunk for two days, took off all his clothes, and ran naked through the Mess Tent with no clothes on," and left with a message: a kiss on the cheek for Hawkeye. In the season's second episode, Colonel Sherman T. Potter was assigned to the unit as commanding officer, replacing Frank Burns (who had taken over as commander after Blake's departure). The series, while still remaining a comedy, gradually became more emotionally rounded. Major Houlihan's role continued to evolve during this time; she became much friendlier towards Hawkeye and B.J., and had a falling out with Frank. She later married a fellow officer, Lieutenant Colonel Donald Penobscot, but the union did not last for long. The “Hot Lips” nickname was rarely used to describe her after about the midway point in the series. In fact, Loretta Swit wanted to leave the series in the 8th season to pursue other acting roles (most notably the part of Christine Cagney on Cagney & Lacey), but the producers refused to let her out of her contract. However, Swit did originate the Cagney role in the made-for-TV movie which served as that series' pilot. Larry Linville noted that his “Frank Burns” character was easier to “dump on” after head comedy writer Larry Gelbart departed after Season Four and "Frank" and "Margaret" parted ways. Throughout Season Five, Linville realized he’d taken Frank Burns as far as he could, and he decided that since he’d signed a five-year contract originally, and his fifth year was coming to an end, he would leave the series. During the first episode of Season Six, Frank Burns (off camera) suffered a nervous breakdown due to Margaret's marriage, and was held for psychiatric evaluation. In an unexpected twist, Burns was then transferred stateside to an Indiana Veteran's Administration hospital, near his home, and was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel - in a sense, Frank's parting shot at Hawkeye. Unlike McLean Stevenson and Wayne Rogers, Linville had no regrets about leaving the series, saying “I felt I had done everything possible with the character.” Major Charles Emerson Winchester, III (David Ogden Stiers) was brought in as an antagonist of sorts to the other surgeons, but his relationship with them was not as acrimonious (although he was a more able foil). Unlike Frank Burns, Winchester did not care for the Army. His resentment stemmed, in part, from the fact that he was transferred from Tokyo General Hospital to the 4077th thanks, in part, to a cribbage debt owed to him by his CO, Colonel Horace Baldwin. What set him apart from Burns as an antagonist for Hawkeye and B.J. was that Winchester was clearly an excellent, technically superior surgeon, though his work sometimes suffered from his excessive perfectionism when rapid “meatball surgery” was called for. Winchester was respected by the others professionally, but at the same time, as a Boston “blueblood,” he was also snobbish, which drove much of his conflict with the other characters. Still, the show's writers would allow Winchester's humanity to shine through, such as in his dealings with a young piano player who had partially lost the use of his right hand, the protection of a stuttering soldier from the bullying of other soldiers (it is revealed later that his sister stutters), his keeping a vigil with Hawkeye when Hawkeye's father went into surgery back in the States, or his continuing of a family tradition of anonymously giving Christmas treats to an orphanage. The episode featuring this tradition is considered by many fans to be among the most moving in the series, as Winchester subjects himself to condemnation after realizing that “it is sadly inappropriate to offer dessert to a child who has had no meal.” Isolating himself, he is saved by Corporal Klinger's own gift of understanding. For the final moment of the episode, Major and Corporal are simply friends. Gary Burghoff (Radar O'Reilly) had been growing restless in his role since at least season four. With each year he appeared in fewer episodes, and by season seven Radar is in barely half of the shows. Burghoff planned to leave at the end of the seventh season, but was convinced by producers to wait until the beginning of season eight, when he filmed a 2-part farewell episode, plus a few short scenes that were inserted into episodes preceding it. The series' final nod to Radar came when his iconic teddy bear was included in a time capsule of the 4077th instigated by Hot Lips. Max Klinger also grew away from the transvestite reputation that overshadowed him. He dropped his Section 8 pursuit when taking over for Radar as Company Clerk. Both Farr and the producers felt that there was more to Klinger than a chiffon dress, and tried to develop the character more fully. Farr stayed throughout the rest of the series. As the series progressed, it made a significant shift from being primarily a comedy to becoming far more dramatically focused. Changes behind the scenes were the primary cause rather than the oft-cited cast defections. Executive Producer Gene Reynolds left at the end of season five, this coupled with head writer Larry Gelbart's departure the year before stripped the show of its comedic foundation. While M*A*S*H continued at a high level, the series' best comedic work was, for the most part, in the past. Beginning with season six, Alan Alda and new Executive Producer Burt Metcalfe became the "voice" of M*A*S*H. By season eight, the writing staff had been overhauled and M*A*S*H displayed a different feel, consciously moving between comedy and drama, unlike the seamless integration of years gone by. While this latter era showcased some fine dramatic moments, the attempts at pure comedy were not so successful. The quirky, fractured camp of the early years had gradually turned into a homogenized "family", clever dialogue gave way to puns, and the sharply defined characters were often unrecognizable and lost most of their comedic bite. In addition, the episodes became more political, and the show was often accused of “preaching” to its viewers. While the series remained popular through these changes, eventually it began to run out of creative steam. Harry Morgan, who played Colonel Potter, admitted in an interview that he felt "the cracks were starting to show" by Season Nine, and the cast had agreed to make season ten their last. In the end, they decided to extend the show for an additional year, making for a total of eleven seasons. “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen” was the final episode of M*A*S*H. The episode aired on February 28, 1983 and was 2½ hours long. It was viewed by nearly 106 million Americans (77% of viewership that night) which established it as the most watched episode in United States television history, a record which still stands. A common urban legend states that the episode was seen by so many people that just after the end of the episode, the New York City Sanitation/Public Works Department reported the largest use of water ever around the city, due to New Yorkers waiting through the whole show to go to the toilet. However, this claim is unfounded. M*A*S*H won a total of 14 Emmys during its eleven-year run. And, Alan Alda became the only person to win an Emmy for acting, writing, and directing. Starting on January 1, 2007, TV Land aired M*A*S*H from 8 p.m. until 8 a.m. for one week in a marathon. According to a press release available at the Futon Critic,[citation needed] the marathon of M*A*S*H episodes and specials that aired during the first week of January drew "an average of 1.3 million total viewers and scored double-digit increases in demo rating and delivery." Additionally, the marathon helped TV Land rank in the top ten basic cable channels among the adults 25–54 demographic for the week. Ratings for specific episodes and specials are also included in the press release: "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen "– 1.3 million total viewers, Memories of M*A*S*H (20th Anniversary) – 1.5 million total viewers, and 30th Anniversary Reunion Special – 1.4 million total viewers. M*A*S*H airs on TV Land and also airs four times a day, Monday through Friday on Hallmark Channel. In Australia, M*A*S*H is aired every weekday at 5pm on the Seven Network in an extensively cut-down form, and the network recently screened the final 2½-hour-long final episode, "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" at the special time of midday in place of the normal midday movie. In New Zealand, the Australian-owned Prime Television channel airs M*A*S*H every weekday at 4:30pm. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, digital channel Paramount Comedy 2 broadcasts two episodes each weekday morning between 9am and 10am, which are then repeated at 7pm that evening and in the early hours of the following morning. The channel also sometimes devotes entire weekends to M*A*S*H, with every episode from a particular season being broadcast. The outdoor set used for the movie, the early years of the series, and then limited times in later seasons, is now a part of Malibu Creek State Park. In early 2008, years of overgrown brush were cleared away, the iconic signpost was rebuilt and tent markers were installed to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the program's finale. On February 23, 2008 cast members Mike Farrell, Loretta Swit, William Christopher and Jeff Maxwell, producers Gene Reynolds and Burt Metcalfe and prolific M*A*S*H director Charles S. Dubin reunited at the outdoor set for the first time to celebrate the milestone. One of the most recognizable sites in entertainment history has been reborn. It can be visited with park entry and a two mile hike, across some pretty rugged terrain (the roads formerly leading to the set have long since washed away). The indoor scenes were filmed on sound stage 9 at 20th Century Fox Studios in Century City, Los Angeles, California. M*A*S*H had two official spin-off shows: the short-lived AfterMASH, which features Sherman Potter, Maxwell Klinger, and Father Mulcahy reunited in a midwestern hospital after the war, and an unpurchased television pilot, W*A*L*T*E*R, in which Walter “Radar” O’Reilly joins a stateside police force. The unofficial spinoff is Trapper John, M.D. It focused on the character of Trapper John working in a hospital years after the Korean War. There was a lawsuit between the producers of M*A*S*H and Trapper John, M.D. over royalty payments from Trapper John, M.D. A court ruled that the more successful Trapper John, M.D., is actually a spinoff of the original theatrical film. The producers of Trapper John, M.D. did tell the producers of M*A*S*H that their show was a spinoff of the movie. However, they were able to prevent M*A*S*H from doing an episode, in which Hawkeye gets depressed after learning that Trapper John had died in a car crash, because of a conflict with their show, in which Trapper John was alive, despite claiming that their show wasn’t a spinoff of the show M*A*S*H. A documentary special titled “Making M*A*S*H,” narrated by Mary Tyler Moore and taking viewers behind the production of the Season 9 episodes "Old Soldiers" and "Lend a Hand", was produced for PBS in 1981. The special was later included in the syndicated rerun package, with new narration by producer Michael Hirsch. Two retrospective specials were produced to commemorate the show's 20th and 30th anniversaries, respectively. “Memories of M*A*S*H,” hosted by Shelley Long and featuring clips from the series and interviews with cast members, aired on CBS on November 25, 1991. A 30th Anniversary Reunion special, in which the surviving cast members and producers gathered to reminisce, aired on the Fox network on May 17, 2002. Hosted by Mike Farrell, he also got to interact with the actor he replaced, Wayne Rogers. Both specials are included as bonuses on the Collector's Edition DVD of "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen". Also included is "M*A*S*H: Television's Serious Sitcom", a 2002 episode of the A&E cable channel's Biography program detailing the history of the show. There was also an E! True Hollywood Story episode produced about the show. Many of the show's cast members appeared in a series of television commercials for IBM personal computers in the late 1980s. 20th Century Fox has released all 11 Seasons of M*A*S*H on DVD in Region 1 & Region 2 for the very first time.

The author of the original novel, Richard Hooker, hated it. The director of the earlier film, Robert Altman, called it “terrible.” In its first season, even the public didn’t like it too much. But over 11 seasons and 251 episodes, the TV version of M*A*S*H came to be regarded as one of the finest shows of all time. Before M*A*S*H, things were a little different than they are today. For one, comedies about the military relied heavily on farce; think Hogan’s Heroes and F Troop. And, the line between TV comedy and TV drama was as well demarcated as the DMZ between the two Koreas. The 38 North Parallel is the most heavily guarded border in the world, with landmines and army personnel and tanks, long-range artillery, and armored personnel carriers on each side, and that is pretty much where comedy and drama stood before M*A*S*H. But, when the show debuted in 1972, the goings-on at the 4,077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital cut much deeper. Larry Gelbart set out to establish a ground breaking “dramedy” approach: to convey war’s hilarity, heartbreak, and hellishness, all in the same episode. This military-doctor comedy daringly combined zany humor, equal parts Marx-Brothers slapstick and high-class wordplay, with dark drama, as when the war claimed the life of the base's first chief, Col. Henry Blake, which outraged the public. But, it wasn’t just the tone that was innovative; it was the technique, too. M*A*S*H was shot on film. The camera moved cinematically, jumping from subplot to subplot to emphasize the ensemble. The show also banned canned laughter in its operating-room scenes (where the doctors often cracked wisest), presaging the single-camera, laugh-track-free comedies of today. Certain episodes even toyed with the boundaries of the genre: a black-and-white “documentary,” a first-person story in which the camera took the place of a wounded soldier, an episode in which the characters, all sleep depraved, had these incredibly horrific dreams. But, what really made M*A*S*H enduring was the most basic asset of all: a crew of great characters: bemused Henry Blake, fatherly Sherman Potter, mischievous Trapper John (and later B.J. Hunnicutt), perpetually outraged Margaret Houlihan, intransigent Frank Burns, snobbish Charles Winchester, humble yet capable Radar O’Reilly, scheming Maxwell Klinger, kind Father Mulcahy, and, of course, the wounded jester at the center of it all, Hawkeye Pierce. Like many great shows, M*A*S*H stayed on the air a few years too long. Sure, the characters changed and deepened over time: Margaret softened up, Hawkeye straightened up, Radar grew up, etc; which led to some of the best acting in TV history. However, the show got preachy and grew as shaggy and soft as B.J. Hunnicutt’s anachronistic hairdo, mainly due to Alan Alda increasing taking more and more control of the show (he would go on to win Emmys for acting, writing, and directing). Nevertheless, when M*A*S*H did go off the air on February 28, 1983, some 125 million people watched, still a record to this day. And, it left a big legacy: M*A*S*H proved that comedy could be serious, drama could be funny, and both could cut like a scalpel.

[Hulk With A Mustache]

7. Hill Street Blues



Genre: Police Procedural.
Created by: Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll.
Executive Producer(s): Gregory Hoblit (1981-1984), Steven Bochco (1981-1984), and Michael Kozoll (1981).
Starring: Daniel J. Travanti (Captain Francis “Frank” Furillo), Barbara Bosson (Fay Furillo 1981-1986), Joe Spano (Sergeant, later Lieutenant, Henry Goldblume), Michael Conrad Sergeant Philip “Phil” Esterhaus 1981-1984), Veronica Hamel (Joyce Davenport), René Enríquez (Lieutenant, later Captain, Ray Calletano), Charles Haid (Officer Andrew “Andy” Renko), James B. Sikking (Sergeant, later Lieutenant, Howard Hunter), Ed Marinaro (Officer Joe Coffey 1981-1986), Michael Warren (Officer Robert “Bobby” Hill), Betty Thomas (Officer, later Sergeant, Lucille “Lucy” Bates), Bruce Weitz (Sergeant Michael “Mick” Belker), and Dennis Franz (Det. Sal Benedetto 1983; Lieutenant Norman Buntz 1985-1987).
Country of Origin: United States.
Number of Seasons: 7.
Number of Episodes: 146.
Running Time: 60 minutes.
Original Channel: NBC.
Original Run: January 15, 1981 – May 12, 1987.
Spinoffs: Beverly Hills Buntz, a 30-minute dramedy starring Dennis Franz as his character Norman Buntz, who moved to Beverly Hills and became a private detective. It lasted only one season, 1987-1988.

Brandon Tartikoff commissioned a series from MTM Productions, appointing Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll as series writers. The pilot was produced in 1980, but was held back as a mid-season replacement so as not to get lost amongst the other programs debuting in the fall of 1980. Barbara Bosson, who was married to Bochco, had the idea to fashion the series into 4- or 5- episode story "arcs." Robert Butler directed the pilot, developing a look and style inspired by the 1977 documentary The Police Tapes, in which filmmakers used handheld cameras to follow police officers in the South Bronx. Butler went on to direct the first four episodes of the series, and Bosson had hoped he would stay on permanently. However, he felt he was not being amply recognized for his contributions to the show's look and style, and left to pursue other projects. He would return to direct just one further episode ("The Second Oldest Profession" in season two).
The writers were allowed considerable creative freedom, and created a series which brought together for the first time a number of emerging ideas in TV drama. Each episode features a number of intertwined storylines, some of which are resolved within the episode, with others developing over a number of episodes throughout a season. Much play is made of the conflicts between the work and private lives of the individuals. In the workplace there is also a strong focus on the struggle between doing "what was right" and "what worked" in situations. The camera is held close in, action cut rapidly between stories, and there is much use of overheard or off-screen dialogue, giving a "documentary" feel to the action. Rather than studio (floor) cameras, hand-held Arriflexes are used to add to the "documentary" feel. The show deals with "real-life" issues, and uses "real-life" language to a greater extent than had been seen before. Almost every episode began with a pre-credits sequence consisting of "roll call" at the beginning of the day shift. Many episodes are written to take place over the course of a single day, a concept later used in the NBC series L.A. Law. Though filmed in Los Angeles (both on location and at CBS Studio Center in Studio City), the series is set in a generic location with a feel of a Northern urban center. The program's focus on failure and those at the bottom of the social scale is pronounced, and very much in contrast to Bochco's later project L. A. Law. It has been described as Barney Miller out of doors; the focus on the bitter realities of 1980s urban living was revolutionary for its time. Later seasons are accused of becoming formulaic (a shift that some believe to have begun after the death from cancer of Michael Conrad midway through the fourth season, which led to the replacement of the beloved Sgt. Esterhaus by Sgt. Stan Jablonski, played by Robert Prosky) and the series that broke the established rules of television ultimately failed to break its own rules. Nonetheless it is a landmark piece of television programming, the influence of which is still seen in such series as NYPD Blue and ER. In 1982, St. Elsewhere was hyped as "Hill Street Blues" in a hospital." In fact the very concept of the modern 'ensemble' drama can probably be traced back to Hill Street Blues. The quality work done by MTM led to the appointment of Grant Tinker as NBC chairman in 1982. In season seven, producers got scripts from acclaimed writers outside of television, such as Bob Woodward and David Mamet. The series had cable runs on TV Land, Bravo and currently, AmericanLife TV. The pilot aired on Thursday, January 15, 1981 at 10 pm, which would be the show's time slot for nearly its entire run. Episode 2 aired two nights later; the next week followed a similar pattern (episode 3 on Thursday, 4 on Saturday). NBC had ordered 13 episodes, and the season was supposed to end on May 25 with a minor cliffhanger (the resolution of Sgt. Esterhaus' wedding). Instead, building critical acclaim prompted NBC to order an additional 4 episodes to air during May sweeps. Bocho and Kozoll fashioned this into a new story arc, which aired as two two-hour episodes to close the season. One new addition with these final 4 episodes was Ofc. Joe Coffey (played by Ed Marinaro) who originally had died in the first season finale's broadcast. In early season 1 episodes, the opening theme has several clearly audible edits; this was quickly replaced by a longer, unedited version. The end credits for the pilot differed from the rest of the series, in that the background still shot of the station house was completely different; it was also copyrighted in 1980, instead of 1981. The show became the lowest-rated program ever renewed for a second season. However, it was only renewed for ten episodes. A full order was picked up part way through the season. A writer strike pushed the start of the second season forward to October 29, meaning that only nineteen episodes were completed that year. Kozoll was now listed as a consultant, signifying his diminished role in the show. He later stated he was already feeling burnt out, and in fact was relying more on car chases and action to fill the scripts. A less muted version of the closing theme was played over the end credits. Michael Kozoll left the show at the end of season 2, replaced for the most part by Anthony Yerkovich and David Milch. Yerkovich later created Miami Vice after leaving Hill Street Blues at the end of this season. This was the show's most popular in terms of viewership, as it finished #21. This was also the birth of Must See TV, as the show was joined by Cheers, Taxi and Fame. The network deemed Thursdays "the best night of television on television." Michael Conrad was increasingly absent from the show due to his ongoing battle with cancer. Michael Conrad's final appearance was halfway through Season 4, as he had died in real life. His character was kept alive until February 1984, when he was sent off in a memorable episode, "Grace Under Pressure." The show won its fourth and final Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series this season. The show changed drastically during the fifth season, entering a somewhat "soap operatic" period according to Bochco. New characters included Sgt. Stanislaus Jablonski (played by Robert Prosky), Det. Patsy Mayo (Mimi Kuzyk), and Det. Harry Garibaldi (Ken Olin), while Mrs. Furillo (Bosson) became a full-time member of the squad room. Bochco would be dismissed at season's end by then-MTM President Arthur Price. The firing was due to Bochco's cost overruns, coupled with the fact that the show had achieved the 100 episode milestone needed to successfully syndicate the program. Betty Thomas would win an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress In a Drama Series this season. However, at the awards ceremony, an unidentified man rushed the stage ahead of Thomas and claimed she was unable to attend. He then claimed the award and left the stage, confusing viewers and robbing Thomas of her moment in the sun. Major changes occurred in Season 6 as Joe Coffey, Patsy Mayo, Det. Harry Garibaldi, Lt. Ray Calletano (Rene Enriquez), Fay Furillo (Barbara Bosson) and Officer Leo Schnitz (Robert Hirschfeld) all leave the show. The sole addition is Lt. Norman Buntz, played by Dennis Franz. In a 1991 interview on Later with Bob Costas, Ken Olin explained that these characters were removed so that the new showrunners could add characters for which they would receive royalties. The season premiere opened with a roll call filled with officers never before seen on the show, briefly fooling viewers into thinking the entire cast had been replaced. It was then revealed that this was, in fact, the night shift. The action then cut to the day shift pursuing their after-work activities. Another unique episode from this season explained through flashbacks how Furillo and Ms. Davenport met and fell in love. This would be the first season that Travanti and Hamel were not nominated for the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor/Actress in a Drama Series. Officer Patrick Flaherty (played by Robert Clohessy) and Officer Tina Russo (Megan Gallagher) joined the show in the seventh season in an attempt to rekindle the Bates-Coffey relationship of years past. Stanislaus Jablonski became a secondary character part way through this season, and when Travanti announced he would not return the next year, the producers decided to end the show in 1987. The program was also moved to Tuesday nights after six years to make way for L.A. Law on Thursdays. This would be the only season that Weitz was not nominated for the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. This was also the only season for which the show was not nominated for Outstanding Drama Series. The producers went to great lengths to avoid specifying where the series took place, even going so far as to obscure whether the call letters of local TV stations began with "W" (the FCC designation for stations east of the Mississippi) or "K" (signifying a station west of the Mississippi). However, Renko stated in the season one episode "Politics As Usual" (to his partner, Officer Hill) "Just drop that 'cowboy' stuff. I was born in New Jersey, (and) never been west of Chicago in my life" was one of many indications that the series took place in the Midwest or Northeast. About 11 minutes into episode 25 The World According to Freedom Lt Calletano, talking on the telephone in Furillo's office, appears to identify himself as a member of "Chicago Police" although there is sufficient ambiguity that he could have been calling the Chicago Police. Many background exterior shots were filmed in Chicago, sans the principal actors, including the station house, which is the old Maxwell Street police station on Chicago's Near West Side (943 West Maxwell Street), and the current home of the University of Illinois at Chicago Police Department. The show's police cruisers are painted and marked almost exactly like Chicago police cars, the main difference being the red door lettering reading "METRO POLICE" rather than "CHICAGO POLICE", and the quarter panels featuring the United States flag vice the Chicago flag. In addition, the opening credits clearly show a squad car with an Illinois "M" plate, which are used for municipal police cars. The series frequently used establishing shots, under the credits at the beginning of the first act, showing an Interstate 80 sign, commuter trains entering and leaving the old Chicago and North Western Railway Chicago terminal (the C&NW yellow and green livery was clearly evident), and aerial views of South Side neighborhoods. Exterior views of the Cook County Criminal Courthouse at 26th Street and California Avenue were used to establish court scenes. The illegality of dumping Sgt. Esterhaus' cremains anywhere in the city except in the ocean was discussed in fourth season dialogue, implying that the series was set in a coastal city. Many of the street names used in the show, especially for identifying crime locations on police radio calls, are from Buffalo, New York. In the episode 'Rites of Spring Part I', Joyce Davenport announces that the Phillies baseball team are "in town," not "at home", indicating the city is not Philadelphia, which is coincidentally Veronica Hamel's hometown. A first-season episode features a modified armored personnel carrier (described as an "urban tank") enthusiastically used by Lieutenant Hunter for his SWAT team, which ended up stolen and dumped in the "East River", suggesting the setting is New York City or, less likely, Minnesota (at the time of the series, there was no inter-league play between the Minnesota Twins and the Phillies). There was a reference to the Lower East Side in the "Fecund Hand Rose" episode (Phil's attempted wedding to Cindy) in the first season about where Det. LaRue lived. In the episode "Gung Ho", a woman mentions committing crimes in Santa Fe, New Mexico, York, Pennsylvania and Newark, New Jersey. If the show was set in one of those states, she probably would not have used both the city and state name when mentioning the locations, thus ruling out New Mexico, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In another episode, a carjacked couple mention that they were on their way home to Buffalo after visiting relatives in Arizona. If so, they wouldn't have taken the much longer route through New York or Philadelphia, which pretty much rules out any east-coast cities. Additionally, in another episode, mention is made of a hired killer coming in from Detroit; Belker also gets knocked out in one episode and is thrown on to a bus headed for "Springfield" (there are Springfields in twenty-nine of the fifty American states and in most Canadian provinces). In the season 6 episode, "Hacked to Pieces", Mayor Cleveland's son, Lee, is desperate to get help for his addictions and wants to be sent to a special clinic in Rockford. Rockford, Illinois is located about 75 miles west of Chicago. The name of the show is based on Pittsburgh's Hill District station. Chief writer Steven Bochco attended college at the nearby Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) and used the always active Hill District Pittsburgh Police Zone 2 station as inspiration for naming the show. Due to writer David Milch being from Buffalo, NY, many of the street names, intersections and once in awhile park names were placed within the Hill Street precinct. Throughout the 146 episodes there are various references to the other police precincts in the city. They are specifically numbered in a series one episode by Commander Swanson, who states that he has "16 precincts" to take care of; but this conflicts with a further specific numbering in the series 2 episode The Shooter when Officer Wallins of the Property Department states that he has to look after all the city's property, "from 14 Precincts". The sixteen Precincts which are named during the course of the various programs include: Hill Street, Polk Avenue, Midtown, Von Steubben Avenue, North-East, St James's Park, Michigan Avenue, Washington Heights, South Ferry, West Delavan, Philmore, South Park, Preston Heights, Richmond Avenue, Farmingdale and Jefferson Heights. The use of numbers for precincts is implied, but not clear. The Hill Street precinct house is marked "7th District" outside. In some scenes the Midtown precinct house is marked "5th District", though in others it is marked "14th Precinct". Officers in uniform (apart from the EAT) wore shoulder flashes with the name of their precinct embroidered; the only other shoulder flash seen was that marked "IMPOUNDS" and worn by LaRue whilst assigned to the motor pool in series 2. A number of characters changed rank during the seven years of production. The pilot episode presented a simple command structure. Captain Furillo had one Lieutenant (Ray Calletano), and they had three Sergeants, one in each of the three main areas of operations - Sgt Phil Esterhaus (uniform), Sgt Henry Goldblume (detective), Sgt Howard Hunter (EAT). There was a process of evolution into a more complex command structure (more reflective of general real-life practice). In this 'evolved' structure Capt. Furillo has three Lieutenants - Calletano, plus Goldblume and Hunter, both promoted; Buntz replaced Calletano when the latter was promoted to Captain, and left the Precinct (though not the series).

Uniforms: There are likewise three uniformed Sergeants - Esterhaus, Bates (following promotion), and a third, elderly, unnamed, Sergeant who appeared in the background of almost every episode (from the final scene of episode 2 until the final episode 6 years later) without ever receiving any story-line; Jablonski replaced Esterhaus following the death of actor Michael Conrad. A further character to appear throughout all 7 seasons without ever being given a storyline was Officer Jock Buchanan, a middle-aged grey-haired officer with a mustache. At the start of the third series he was promoted to Corporal. Although his appearance with two uniform stripes was never given a title in any episode, the existence of the 'corporal' rank in the Metro Police was demonstrated in an early episode of series 1 when Furillo visited Headquarters and during a conversation with Commander Swanson a list of names and ranks (including Corporal) was displayed on a blackboard in the background.

Detectives: Amongst the detectives Alf Chesley was the detective Sergeant, until he was promoted to Lieutenant and left the show; this left undercover officer Mick Belker as the only notable Detective Sergeant. Walsh was also referred to as 'Sergeant' by Fay Furillo during the first series.

Emergency Action Team: Strangely, after Hunter's promotion to Lieutenant no EAT Sergeant was ever depicted. Corporal Schmeltzer appeared to be Hunter's second-in-command, although the role of 'right hand man' was assumed jointly by EAT Officers Webster and Ballantine. Their roles were so interchangeable that in the credits of episode Of Mouse and Man Gary Miller (Ballantine) is credited as playing Webster. However, in the final year of programming it was Ballantine who assumed the more prominent storyline, having apparently gone insane and turned against Hunter.

These various promotions are reflected in the ranks of the characters, as referenced in the following cast list:

Officers are listed by the rank they held at first appearance on the program; some officers later held higher ranks

Chief of Police Fletcher P. Daniels (1981-1987) (historically, was Captain at 23rd Precinct) — Jon Cypher

Deputy Chief Dennis Mahoney — Ron Parady

Inspector Warren Briscoe (1982-1987) — Andy Romano

Commander (later Deputy Chief) David (Dave) Swanson — George Dickerson
Commander 'Buck' Remington (Head of the EAT) — George Murdock
Commander William Lakeland (Dated Bates) — J. Patrick McNamara

Captain Francis Xavier (Frank) Furillo (Hill Street Precinct) (1981-1987) — Daniel J. Travanti
Captain Jerry Fuchs (1981-1984) (Special Narcotics) — Vincent Lucchesi
Captain Roger MacPherson (Midtown Precinct) (1981-1982) — Andy Romano (on promotion to Inspector, Romano's character inexplicably changed his name to Warren Briscoe)
Captain Lewis 'Lou' Hogan (Jefferson Heights Precinct) — Robert Hogan
Captain Leder — Charles Cyphers

Lieutenant (later Captain) Ray Calletano (1981-1987) — René Enríquez
Lieutenant Norman Buntz (1985-1987) — Dennis Franz
Lieutenant (later Captain)(later Commander) Ozzie Cleveland (1982-1985) (Midtown Precinct - he resigned upon election as Mayor) — J. A. Preston
Lieutenant Emil Schneider (Internal Affairs) — Dolph Sweet
Lieutenant Shipman (1983-1987) (Internal Affairs) — Arthur Taxier

Sergeant (later Lieutenant) Howard Hunter (EAT commander) (1981-1987) — James B. Sikking
Sergeant (later Lieutenant) Henry Goldblume (Negotiator) (historically, was a patrol officer at Jefferson Heights)(1981-1987) — Joe Spano
Sergeant (later Lieutenant) Alf Chesley (Detective) (1981-1982) — Gerry Black
Sergeant Philip Freemason (Phil) Esterhaus (1981-1984) — Michael Conrad
Sergeant Michael (Mick) Belker (Undercover Detective) (1981-1987) — Bruce Weitz
Sergeant Neil Washington (LaRue's partner) — Taurean Blacque
Sergeant Stan Jablonski (1984-1987) — Robert Prosky
Sergeant Jenkins (1985-1987) (Night-shift sergeant) — Lawrence Tierney (has final line of final episode)
Sergeant Ralph Macafee (Corrupt cop) — Dan Hedaya

Corporal Schmeltzer (EAT) — Actor unknown

Officer (later Sergeant) Lucille (Lucy) Bates (1981-1987) — Betty Thomas
Officer (later Corporal) Jock Buchanan (1981-1987) — Actor unknown
Officer Joe Coffey (Bates' partner) (1981-1986) — Ed Marinaro
Officer Robert Eugene (Bobby) Hill (historically, was a patrol officer at Jefferson Heights)(1981-1987) — Michael Warren
Officer Andrew Jackson (Andy) Renko (Hill's partner)(1981-1987) — Charles Haid
Officer Patrick Flaherty (1986-1987) — Robert Clohessy
Officer Tina Russo (1986-1987) — Megan Gallagher
Officer Leo Schnitz (1981-1985) — Robert Hirschfeld
Officer Mike Perez (1981-1985) — Tony Perez
Officer Robin Tataglia (1982-1987) — Lisa Sutton
Officer 'Pete' Dorsey (rookie with Tataglia) (murdered in episode 48) — Peter Lownds
Officer 'Nate' Crawford (rookie with Tataglia) — Franklyn Seales
Officer Ron Garfield (1983-1986) — Mykelti Williamson
Officer Marvin Oliver (Marv) Box (1981) (Phone installing expert of series 1) — Actor unknown
Officer Santini (series 1) — Jeff Seymour
Officer Bernard (Bern) Harris (series 1) — Mark Metcalf
Officer Cooper (Perez's partner in series 1) — Actor unknown
Officer Ellis (Perez's partner in series 2) — Leonard Lightfoot
Officer Gerald (Gerry) Nash (series 2)(historically, was a patrol officer at Jefferson Heights with Hill) — Stephen McHattie
Officer Estella Sanchez (series 2) — Livia Genise
Officer Lyle (series 2) — Phil Peters
Officer Clara Pilsky (1984) — Jane Kaczmarek
Officer Archie Peyser (1984) — Barry Tubb
Officer Randall Buttman (1984) — Michael Biehn
Officer Rudy Davis (1984) — Harold Sylvester
Officer Arthur 'Art' Delgado (series 2) — Jerome Thor
Officer Jack Halloran (killed in series 2) — Actor unknown
Officer Wallace 'Wally' Tubbs — Arnold Johnson
Officer Coley (1981-1982) — Robin Coleman
Officer Wallins (Property Dept.) (series 2) — Ben Slack
Officer Webster (EAT) (1981-?) (one of Hunter's key assistants) — Tom Babson (series 1) / Dwyane McGee (from series 2 onwards)
Officer Jack Ballantine (EAT) (1981-1987) (one of Hunter's key assistants) — Gary Miller
Officer Brunswick (EAT) (1981-1982) — Wesley Thompson
Detective John (J. D.) LaRue — Kiel Martin
Detective Sal Benedetto (1983) — Dennis Franz
Detective Patsy Mayo (1984-1985) — Mimi Kuzyk
Detective Harry Garibaldi (1984-1985) — Ken Olin
Detective John Walsh (1981-1982) — John Brandon
Detective Ben Lambert (1981-1982) — Charles Guardino
Detective Virgil Pattison Brooks (1981-1982) (Belker's fellow undercover cop, murdered in episode 20) — Nathan Cook
Detective Michael Benedict (1984-1987) — Gerald Castillo

Other characters
Fay Furillo (Capt Furillo's ex-wife) (1981-1986) — Barbara Bosson
Joyce Davenport (Public Defender) — Veronica Hamel
Mayor Ozzie Cleveland (1982-1985) — J. A. Preston
Grace Gardner (1981-1985) — Barbara Babcock
Asst. D.A. Irwin Bernstein (1982-1987) — George Wyner
Sidney (Sid the Snitch) Thurston (Belker's informant; later Buntz's paid informant) (1985-1987) — Peter Jurasik
Jesus Martinez (Gang leader-turned community activist) — Trinidad Silva
Judge Alan Wachtel — Jeffrey Tambor
Judge Maurice Schiller — Allan Rich
Coroner Wally Nydorf — Pat Corley
Celeste Patterson (1985-1986) — Judith Hansen
Eddie Gregg (1982-1986) — Charles Levin
James Logan (the bald pickpocket, his real name is only discovered in his final appearance) — Nick Savage
Rosa Calletano (Ray Calletano's wife) — Irena Du Barry
Rachel Goldblume (Henry Goldblume's wife) — Rosanna Huffman
Harvey (Fay Furillo's boyfriend) — Philip G Schultz
Debbie Kaplan (Belker's girlfriend in early series) — Gela Jacobson
Jill Thomas (Washington's girlfriend in series 1 & 2) — Lynn Whitfield
Cindy Spooner (Esterhaus's fiancée) — Lisa Lindgren
John Renko (father of Andrew Renko) — Morgan Woodward
Tommy Renko (brother of Andrew Renko) — David Haid
Tracy Renko (sister of Andrew Renko) — Alley Mills
Daryl Ann Renko (girlfriend, later wife, of Andrew Renko) — Deborah Richter
Vivian DeWitt (Fabian's mother) — Beverly Hope Atkinson
Fabian DeWitt (youth adopted by Bates) — Zero Hubbard
Bailiff (1981-1987) — Dean Wein
"Buck Naked" (recurring flasher) — Lee Weaver
Prunella Ashton-Wilkes (refined English dog-loving girlfriend of Hunter) — Elizabeth Huddle

The producers did not intend Officers Renko and Hill to be ongoing characters - Renko was not supposed to survive their shooting in the pilot episode. NBC was sufficiently impressed with the chemistry between Charles Haid and Michael Warren that they insisted that Renko survive and become series regulars. Similarly, Coffey was "resurrected" after being killed at the end of the first season. In reruns, the scene was replaced and Coffey was said to be only wounded. Ed Marinaro joined the series as a regular the next season only to be shot down fatally again in season 6. Barbara Bosson had been cast, having been Bochco's wife at the time. NBC president Fred Silverman noticed her and requested that she appear regularly in the series.
Dennis Franz appears as dirty cop Sal Benedetto in a memorable 3rd season story arc before taking on the role of Lt. Norman Buntz. Franz and Ken Olin also starred in the 1983 Bochco series, Bay City Blues. Daniel J. Travanti and Charles Haid appeared on a 1974 episode of Gunsmoke together, playing a pair of criminals looking to rob a bank. Haid and Michael Conrad were regulars on the Steven Bochco series Delvecchio. Michael Warren and Kiel Martin each appeared in an episode, as well. Patrick Clohessy appears as a uniformed cop in the fifth-season finale of St. Elsewhere as a wrecking ball strikes St. Eligius Hospital. As actors contracts were due to expire at the end of season seven, there was talk that if the show survived for season eight, Buntz would become the precinct's commanding officer. James B. Sikking appears as Hunter in an episode of 1990 Bochco series Cop Rock. Marinaro, Spano, Weitz, Warren and Blacque appear as police officers in the HBO sitcom Dream On in 1994. Travanti rarely wishes to discuss the series in interviews, and often will not refer to it by name. In a 1989 episode of Later with Bob Costas, he compares it to referring to an estranged ex-wife. He and Veronica Hamel were reunited in 2002 at the NBC 75th Anniversary Special. One minor recurring character was a flasher who would shout "I'm buck naked!" whenever he exposed himself. In one episode, the desk sergeant entered "Buck Naked" as the suspect's name in the arrest logs. The character (played by Lee Weaver) was also billed as "Buck Naked" in the credits, and later reappeared in NYPD Blue. In 2004-2005 Charles Haid played C. T. Finney, a New York Police Captain on the sixth season of the NBC show Third Watch. Veronica Hamel also guest-starred as the mother of New York firefighter Alex Taylor as part of the NBC 75th Anniversary programming in May 2002, along with Marinaro and Weitz. Entertainment Tonight did a one-hour retrospective to the series in 2000. Officer Andrew Renko and his younger brother Tommy Renko are played by actual brothers Charles Haid and David Haid. The violent portrayal of gang culture was a constant feature across all seven seasons. At the time it was a relatively unknown concept in some countries where the program was aired. Many storylines relate to features of gang life, and also the very different approach of officers like Furillo and Goldblume compared with others such as Hunter. The constantly recurring gangs included the Gypsies, the Shamrocks, the Black Arrows, the Royal Blood, the Dragons, the Street Lords, the Mao-Mao, the Pagans, the Emperors, and Los Diablos. The two-hour pilot episode, "Hill Street Station," was awarded an Edgar for Best Teleplay from a Series. Over its seven seasons, the show earned 98 Emmy Award nominations. That averages out to 14 nominations every year. The series shares the Emmy Award record for most acting nominations by regular cast members (excluding the guest performer category) for a single series in one year. (Both L. A. Law and The West Wing also hold that record). For the 1981-1982 season nine cast members were nominated for Emmys. Daniel J. Travanti and Michael Conrad were the only ones to win (for Lead Actor and Supporting Actor respectively). The others nominated were Veronica Hamel (for Lead Actress), Taurean Blacque, Michael Warren, Bruce Weitz, and Charles Haid (for Supporting Actor), and Barbara Bosson and Betty Thomas (for Supporting Actress). Also that year, for the first and only time in Emmy Award history all five nominees in an acting category (in this case, Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series) were from a single series. In 2007, Channel 4 (UK) ranked Hill Street Blues #19 on their list of the "50 Greatest TV Dramas." 20th Century Fox has released the first two seasons of Hill Street Blues on DVD in Region 1. In Region 2, Season 1 & 2 have been released by Channel 4 DVD. Season 1 can also be found on hulu.com. Hill Street Blues was also the name of a computer game that was based on the TV show released in 1991 by Krisalis. The game placed the player in charge of Hill Street Station and its surrounding neighborhood with the aim being to promptly dispatch officers to reported crimes, apprehending criminals and making them testify at court. If certain areas had less serious crimes unresolved, such as bag-snatching, they would soon escalate to more serious ones such as murder in broad daylight. Beverly Hills Buntz was a short-lived spinoff from Hill Street Blues. It aired on NBC during the 1987-88 season. The show was a 30-minute 'dramedy', that was a hybrid between light private eye fare and a sit-com. The main character, Norman Buntz, was previously seen as a morally and ethically questionable cop on Hill Street Blues. The series has the character quitting the police force, moving to Beverly Hills, and becoming a private investigator. In a programming experiment, NBC president Brandon Tartikoff announced that this show would be a "designated hitter" and was originally given prize time slots once a month following Cheers and Night Court. The other two "designated hitters" that season were Bruce Weitz and Nancy Walker sitcom, "Mama's Boy" and the second season of Edward Asner drama The Bronx Zoo. Eventually, Buntz was scheduled Fridays at 9:30pm between Night Court and Miami Vice in March 1988. The line-up didn't click for Night Court and "Buntz" but gained Miami Vice a fifth season with an improved performance having moved from 9pm back to 10pm. Three pilots of "Buntz" were filmed including one by director Hal Ashby. Thirteen episodes were filmed, of which only nine were broadcast. The first episode was broadcast 5 November 1987 and the last on 22 April 1988. The series starred Dennis Franz as Norman Buntz, and Peter Jurasik as Sid 'The Snitch' Thurston. Dana Wheeler-Nicholson joined the cast and former "Blues" character 'Irwin Bernstein' played by George Wyner made an appearance.

Someone said to me that he felt that The Wire was better than Hill Streets Blues. Well, that is his opinion. However, I should point out that there probably wouldn’t be any show like The Wire if it wasn’t for Hill Street Blues. Hell, there wouldn’t be any Homicide: Life On The Street, NYPD Blue, The Shield, Law And Order, and pretty much any cop drama that has come out in the last twenty years and longer if it wasn’t for Hill Street Blues. Why? Because, Hill Street Blues took the cop show and turned it upside down. Law enforcement officials had previously been portrayed on TV as either dutiful civil servants (Dragnet, Adam-12) or larger-than-life superheroes (The Untouchables, Starsky & Hutch). Hill Street Blues took a more humanistic view, painting cops as complicated individuals. Foremost amongst these was soft-spoken, intense Captain Frank Furillo (Travanti), the supervisor of a chaotic precinct in an unnamed city, done intentionally to make the show seem more universal). Furillo oversaw a squad room, but he spent much of his time dealing with his hectoring ex-wife, Fay (Bosson), and carrying on a torrid relationship with sultry, bleeding-heart public defender Joyce Davenport (Hamel), who would later become his wife in the series. Each installment opened with a roll call that set up that week’s stories. These briefings were initially delivered by Sgt. Phil Esterhaus (Conrad), a gentle soul who turned out the troops with his trademark phrase, “Let’s be careful out there.” After Conrad died in 1984, Esterhaus suffered a fatal heart attack while making love to his flamboyant girlfriend, Grace Gardner (Barbara Babcock). He was replaced by Stan “Stosh” Jablonski (Robert Prosky), whose less-refined manner was summed up by his blunt tag line, “Let’s do it to them before they do it to us.” Hill Street’s teeming ensemble swelled to 17 at one point, but several characters stood out: good ol’ boy Andrew Renko (Haid); his profoundly decent partner Bobby Hill (Warren), who was the show’s conscience; Lucy Bates (Thomas), the most believable TV policewoman ever; gung ho Emergency Action Team leader Lt. Howard Hunter (Sikking); abrasive Norman Buntz (Franz); and growling undercover detective Mick “Mad Dog” Belker (Weitz), who often provided the gallows humor. Besides the characters, there were many things that made the show unique. For one, as the squad investigated cases ranging from domestic abuse to gangland warfare, the series examined important social issues while avoiding preachiness. Also, comedy and tragedy frequently collided, as in the episode in which self-appointed superhero Captain Freedom (Dennis Duggan) was shot and killed by a thug; as he expired, Belker barked at him, “You di, you hair bag, I’ll kick your but across the block!” And, there was the fact that the show was a pioneer of the story arc. Well, I use the term pioneer loosely. The Prisoner and miniseries told serial stories before Hill Street, and The Fugitive hung a years-long chase on its otherwise self-contained episodes. And, other shows, like Miami Vice and Wiseguy, usually get the claim to fame as the story arc starters. But Hill Street Blues popularized the serialized "story arcs" by proving that audiences would have the patience to stick with a story longer than 60 minutes. It also proved that a TV show could make a virtue of messiness in plots that didn't resolve neatly (or sometimes at all) and heroes who crossed ethical lines. It showed us imperfect people delivering imperfect justice in an imperfect world and did it to near perfection. Like a great blues song, Hill Street Blues featured recurring themes, a soulful tone, and a sense of joy underlying the melancholia. These cops had it bad, but that was good for us.

[Hulk With A Mustache]

Tomorrow, numbers 6 and 5. Here are the hints:

Girl who gets affection, and it was called "too New York, too Jewish."

[Hulk With A Mustache]

Today, we reach the top 5. But, first, here is number 6:

6. I Love Lucy



Genre: Sitcom.
Created by: Desi Arnaz.
Executive Producer(s): Desi Arnaz.
Starring: Lucille Ball (Lucy Ricardo), Desi Arnaz (Ricky Ricardo), Vivian Vance (Ethel Mertz), William Frawley (Fred Mertz), and Keith Thibodeaux (billed as Richard Keith; Ricky Ricardo, Jr. 1956-1957).
Country of Origin: United States.
Number of Seasons: 6 (9 including The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour).
Number of Episodes: 194 (including the "lost" Christmas episode, original pilot and 13 Lucy-Desi Comedy Hours).
Running Time: 30 minutes.
Original Channel: CBS.
Original Run: October 15, 1951 – May 6, 1957.
Spinoffs: The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, which aired after the 6th Season of I Love Lucy. A spinoff featuring the Mertzes was planned, but Vivian Vance refused to do it. An I Love Lucy radio show was also made in 1952. Lucille Ball would go on to star in three more sitcoms: The Lucy Show, Here’s Lucy, and Life With Lucy.

I Love Lucy was created by Desi Arnaz and starred his wife Lucille Ball as the title character. It was the first show to have a woman as the main character, the first show to depict an interracial couple, and the first show to film with 35 mm film, three cameras, and in front of a live studio audience. This would become the standard for filming sitcoms for many decades afterwards. Set mostly in New York City, I Love Lucy centers on Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball), and her singer/bandleader husband Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz), along with their friends and landlords Fred Mertz (William Frawley) and Ethel Mertz (Vivian Vance). In later seasons, Lucy and Ricky had a son named Little Ricky. Lucy is somewhat naïve and ambitious, with an overactive imagination and a knack for getting herself into trouble. Primarily she is obsessed with joining her husband in show business. Fred and Ethel are former vaudevillians and this only strengthens her resolve to prove herself as a performer. Unfortunately, she cannot carry a tune or play anything other than an off-key rendition of "Glow Worm" (or "Sweet Sue") on the saxophone and has little other discernible ability (although to say she completely without any sort of talent would be untrue as she has on occasion proven to be a good dancer and a competent singer in some cases). The show provided Ball ample opportunity to display her considerable skill at clowning and physical comedy, with Lucy's determination to get into the act in any way possible, resulting in numerous wacky situations. Character development was not a major focus of early sitcoms, so not much was ever learned about her life prior to the show. A few episodes mentioned that she was born in Jamestown, New York, (later corrected to West Jamestown), and that she met Ricky on a blind date. Besides occasional appearances by her mother (Kathryn Card), who annoyed Ricky to no end by constantly mispronouncing his name as "Mickey" and mistaking him for fellow bandleader Xavier Cugat, hardly any mention was ever made of any other family members. Lucy's husband, Ricky Ricardo (the character initially was named Larry Lopez), is an up-and-coming Cuban American singer and bandleader with an excitable personality. His patience is frequently tested, sometimes to the breaking point, by his wife's antics. When exasperated, he often reverts to speaking rapidly in Spanish. As with Lucy, not much was ever learned about his past or family. Ricky's mother appeared in two episodes and in another Lucy mentioned that he had five brothers. He also mentioned that he'd been "practically raised" by his uncle Alberto (who was seen during a family visit to Cuba) and that he'd attended Havana University. Lucy's best friend, confidant and accomplice in her crazy schemes is Ethel Mertz. A former model from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Ethel tries to relive her glory days in vaudeville. She usually gets more chances to perform at Ricky's nightclub, because, unlike Lucy, she can actually sing and dance. Ethel, although she is Lucy's ally, often tries to reason with her, providing common sense advice. Ethel's husband Fred served in World War I and lived through the Great Depression. He is very stingy with money and a very no-nonsense type of guy. However, he also shows that he can be a soft touch, especially when it comes to Little Ricky, the Ricardos' son. Fred performed in vaudeville, so like his wife Ethel, he can also sing and dance. Lucy and Ricky often play tricks on each other; for example, when Lucy tricked Ricky into thinking she was a compulsive thief; or when Ricky tricked Lucy into thinking she was not legally married to him, based on a mistake in their license. Although they may disagree at times, and despite their age differences (not only the Mertzes' and Ricardos', but Lucy and Desi's, with Lucy six years Desi's senior), the four main characters are very close and loving. The Manhattan building they all lived in before their move to Connecticut was addressed at 623 E. 68th Street, which in reality would be located in the East River. When Desi was 33, CBS asked Lucy to take her popular radio show to television, but Lucy insisted that the man playing the role of husband be her own husband, who had been on the road as a bandleader touring, and away from Lucy for months at a time. When CBS refused because he was foreign-born, Lucy decided to create a television series of her own to bring her husband back home, and "I Love Lucy" was brought to television. I Love Lucy was somewhat similar to My Favorite Husband, a 1948-51 CBS comedy radio series in which Lucille Ball (as zany housewife Liz Cooper) starred with Richard Denning. Some of the My Favorite Husband scripts were rewritten as TV scripts for I Love Lucy by the same writers, Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll, Jr. Based on the novel Mr. and Mrs. Cugat by Isabel Scott Rorick, My Favorite Husband was broadcast from July 23, 1948 to March 31, 1951, sponsored by General Foods. Gale Gordon and Bea Benaderet, supporting cast members on My Favorite Husband, were originally approached for the roles of Fred and Ethel, but neither could accept due to previous commitments. Gordon did appear as a guest star in three episodes, playing Ricky's boss, Mr. Littlefield, in two episodes, and later in an hour-long episode as a civil court judge. Gordon was a veteran from the classic radio days in which he perfected the role of the exasperated character, as in Fibber McGee and Molly. He would go on to co-star with Ball in most of her post–I Love Lucy series. Benaderet was a guest star in one episode as the Ricardos' neighbor, the elderly Miss Lewis. Barbara Pepper (later featured as Doris Ziffel in the series Green Acres) was also considered to play Ethel, but Pepper had been drinking very heavily after the death of her husband, Craig W. Reynolds. Her friendship with Ball dated back to the film Roman Scandals, in which both appeared as Goldwyn Girls. She turned up regularly in bit parts. On February 27, 1952, an I Love Lucy radio show was produced, but it never aired. This was a pilot episode, created by editing the soundtrack of the television episode "Breaking the Lease", with added Arnaz narration. It included commercials for Philip Morris, which sponsored the TV series. While it never aired on radio at the time in the 1950s, copies of this radio pilot episode have been circulating among "old time radio" collectors for years, and this radio pilot episode has aired in more recent decades on numerous local radio stations which air some "old time radio" programming. At the time, most television shows were broadcast live from New York City, and a low-quality 35mm or 16mm kinescope print was made of the show to broadcast it in other time zones. But Ball was pregnant at the time, and she and Arnaz therefore insisted on filming the show in Hollywood. The duo, along with co-creator Jess Oppenheimer, then decided to shoot the show on 35 mm film in front of a studio audience, with three cameras, a technique now standard for most present-day sitcoms. The result was a much sharper image than other shows of the time, and the audience reactions were far more authentic than the "canned laughter" used on most filmed sitcoms of the time. The technique was not completely new — another CBS comedy series, Amos 'n' Andy, which debuted four months earlier, was already being filmed at Hal Roach Studios with three 35mm cameras to save time and money. Hal Roach Studios was also used for filming at least two other TV comedies as early as 1950, both airing on ABC, namely Stu Erwin's "The Trouble with Father", and the TV version of "Beulah"; and the original 1949/50 Jackie Gleason TV version of "The Life of Riley" on NBC was also done on film, not live. There were also some dramatic TV shows pre-dating I Love Lucy which were also filmed, not live. But I Love Lucy was the first show to use this film technique in front of a studio audience. Arnaz persuaded Karl Freund, cinematographer of such films as “Metropolis” (1927), “Dracula” (1931), and “The Good Earth” (1937), as well as director of “The Mummy” (1932), to be the series' cinematographer. Scenes were often performed in sequence, as a play would be, which was unusual for comedies at that time. Retakes were rare and dialogue mistakes were often played off for the sake of continuity. Desilu, the company jointly owned by Ball and Arnaz, produced I Love Lucy as well as other shows. It rented space at General Service Studios in Hollywood from 1951 to 1954, when it bought the Motion Picture Center, also in Hollywood, and renamed it Desilu Studios. Many real-life facts about Arnaz and Ball made it into the series. Like Ball, Lucy Ricardo was born on August 6 in Jamestown, New York, and attended high school in Celoron, New York. Also, the Ricardos were married at the Byram River Beagle Club in Greenwich, Connecticut, just as the Arnazes had been. In one particular episode Lucy and Ricky are fighting over whether or not the bedroom window should be open or closed while they slept. The opening familiar to most viewers, featuring the credits superimposed over a "heart on satin" image, was created specifically for syndication. As originally broadcast, the episodes opened with animated matchstick figures of Arnaz and Ball making reference to whomever the particular episode's sponsor was. These sequences were created by the animation team of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, who declined screen credit because they were technically under exclusive contract to MGM at the time. The original sponsor was cigarette maker Philip Morris, so the program opened with a cartoon of Lucy and Ricky climbing down a pack of Philip Morris cigarettes. In the early episodes, Lucy and Ricky, as well as Ethel and Fred on occasion, were shown smoking Phillip Morris cigarettes. Since the original sponsor references were no longer appropriate when the shows went into syndication, a new opening was needed, which resulted in the classic heart on satin opening. The original openings, with the sponsor names edited out, are now used on TV Land showings, with a TV Land logo superimposed to obscure the original sponsor's logo. Ironically, this has led some people to believe that the restored introduction was created specifically for TV Land as an example of kitsch. Just before filming the show, Lucy became pregnant with her and Desi's first child, Lucie Arnaz. They actually filmed the original pilot while Lucy was "showing", but did not include any references to the pregnancy in the episode. Later, during the second season, Lucy was pregnant again with second child Desi Arnaz, Jr., and this time the pregnancy was incorporated into the series' storyline. Despite popular belief, Lucy's pregnancy was not television's first on-screen pregnancy. That distinction belongs to Mary Kay on the late 1940s sitcom, Mary Kay and Johnny. CBS would not allow I Love Lucy to use the word "pregnant", so "expecting" was used instead. The episode "Lucy Is Enceinte" first aired on December 8, 1952 ("enceinte" being French for "expecting" or "pregnant"). The episode in which Lucy gives birth, "Lucy Goes to the Hospital," first aired on January 19, 1953. To increase the publicity of this episode, the original air date was chosen to coincide with Lucille Ball's real-life delivery of Desi, Jr. by Caesarean section. "Lucy Goes to the Hospital" was watched by more people than any other TV program up to that time, with 68% of all American television sets tuned in. America saw Little Ricky as an infant in the 1952-1953 season, a toddler from 1953 to 1956, and finally a young school-age boy from 1956 to 1960. However, five actors played the role, two sets of twins and later Keith Thibodeaux. When Jess Oppenheimer was trying to consider the sex of the child he asked Desi what he wanted. Desi replied that he wants a boy because this might be his only chance to get a son out of Lucy. So from then on no matter what the sex of Lucy Ball's real baby was, Lucy Ricardo would have a boy. Most episodes take place in the Ricardos' modest brownstone apartment at 623 East 68th Street or at the downtown "Tropicana" nightclub where Ricky is employed, though other parts of the city are sometimes used. Later episodes take the Ricardos and the Mertzes to Hollywood for Ricky to shoot a movie, and to Europe, when Ricky and his band tour the continent. There is also a trip to Miami Beach for the two couples, with a side trip to Ricky's homeland of Cuba. Eventually, the quartet move to Westport, Connecticut. Some especially memorable episodes:

"Lucy Does a TV Commercial": Lucy is hired to act as the "Vitameatavegamin girl" in a TV commercial, to promote a health tonic that contains healthy amounts of vitamins, meat, vegetables, minerals, and a less-than-healthy dose of 23% alcohol. Lucy becomes progressively drunker but gamely keeps on pitching the product. In November 2001, fans voted this episode as their favorite, during a 50th anniversary I Love Lucy television special. TV Guide and Nick at Nite ranked it the second greatest television episode of all time, after the Mary Tyler Moore Show's "Chuckles Bites the Dust."

"Job Switching": Lucy and Ethel get jobs packaging candy that is delivered on a conveyor belt. The work seems easy enough when they are shown what to do by their supervisor, but then the pace picks up and the women soon fall further and further behind. In desperation, they resort to comical means to try to keep up. The skit, a variation of an old vaudeville routine, has been parodied numerous times.

"Lucy and Superman": Lucy tries to get George Reeves, star of the 1950s Adventures of Superman TV series, to appear at little Ricky's birthday party. When she fails, she dresses up as Superman herself, only to have Reeves turn up in costume at the last minute and rescue her after she traps herself on the ledge of her apartment.

"L.A. At Last": Lucy, Fred, and Ethel have lunch at The Brown Derby, where Lucy accidentally causes a waiter to heave a pie in William Holden's face. Later at the hotel, Ricky has a surprise for her. He has brought one of her favorite actors to meet her, none other than William Holden. Fearing that the actor will recognize her, she puts on a disguise that includes a putty nose which catches on fire when she lights a cigarette.

"Lucy and Harpo Marx": While living in Hollywood, Lucy is visited by Carolyn Appleby, a friend who is under the impression that Lucy knows numerous celebrities. After Lucy and Ethel get Carolyn's glasses away from her, Lucy pretends to be various stars. Meanwhile, Ricky and Fred invite Harpo Marx to the Ricardos' apartment. When he shows up, Lucy is disguised as him; seeing the real Harpo, she hides in a kitchen doorway. Harpo is perplexed when he sees what he thinks is his reflection, forcing Lucy to mimic his every move to avoid detection. This was a tribute to Harpo and Groucho's famous mirror scene in the Marx Brothers comedy classic, “Duck Soup.”

"Lucy Does the Tango": The Ricardos and the Mertzes chicken business isn't doing very well. Lucy and Ethel come up with a scheme to fool the boys into thinking the hens are laying lots of eggs by smuggling some, hidden underneath their clothes, into the henhouse. On one such trip, Ricky insists that he and Lucy rehearse their tango number for a local benefit. Unbeknownst to Ricky, Lucy's blouse is filled with chicken eggs.

The episode "Lucy Goes to the Hospital" first aired on Monday, January 19, 1953. It garnered a record 71.7 rating, meaning 71.7% of all television households at the time were tuned in to the program. To this day, that record is surpassed only by Elvis Presley's appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956 (82.6% rating).

Arnaz and Ball capitalized on the series' popularity by starring in Vincente Minnelli's 1954 film “The Long, Long Trailer” as Tacy and Nicky Collini, two characters very similar to Lucy and Ricky. Also during this time, Desilu produced a feature film version of the show in 1953, consisting of three first-season episodes edited together: "The Benefit," "Breaking the Lease," and "The Ballet". New scenes featuring the cast were filmed and put between the episodes to tie them into one cohesive story. MGM, however, demanded the I Love Lucy movie be shelved because they felt it would diminish interest in “The Long, Long Trailer.” Although I Love Lucy was never theatrically released and had been forgotten, it has since been found and has been released on the bonus disc in the Complete Series collection, available now. In 1956 Lucy and Desi starred in the feature film “Forever, Darling” with James Mason. After the conclusion of the sixth season of I Love Lucy, Lucy and Desi decided to cut down on the number of episodes that were filmed. Instead, they extended I Love Lucy to 60 minutes, with a guest star each episode. They renamed the show The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show and later changed for syndication to The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour. Thirteen hour-long episodes aired from 1957 to 1960. The main cast, Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley were all in the show. The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour is available on DVD, released as I Love Lucy: The Final Seasons 7, 8, & 9. On March 2, Desi's birthday, 1960, the day after the last hour-long episode was filmed, Lucille Ball filed for divorce from Desi Arnaz. When the series ended, Vance and Frawley were said to have been offered a chance to take their characters to their own spin-off series. Frawley was willing, but Vance refused to ever work with Frawley again since the two did not get along. Frawley did appear once more with Lucille Ball in an episode of The Lucy Show. In 1962, Ball began a six-year run with The Lucy Show, followed immediately in 1968 by six more years on yet another sitcom, Here's Lucy, finally ending her long run as a CBS sitcom star in 1974. Both The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy are notable for having Vance as recurring characters named Viv (Vivian Bagley Bunson on The Lucy Show and Vivian Jones on Here's Lucy), so named because she was tired of being recognized on the street and addressed as Ethel. Vance was a regular during the first three seasons of The Lucy Show but continued to make guest appearances through the years on The Lucy Show, and on Here's Lucy. In 1977, Vance and Ball were reunited one last time in the CBS special, Lucy Calls the President, which co-starred Gale Gordon. In 1986, Ball tried another sitcom, Life with Lucy. The series aired on ABC for eight episodes before being cancelled due to low ratings. Oddly enough, the show debuted to very high ratings, landing in Nielson's Top 20 for that week. I Love Lucy has remained perennially popular. For instance, it was one of the first programs made in the USA seen on British television, which became more open to commerce with the launch of ITV, a commercial network that aired the series, in September 1955. As of July 2007, it remains the longest-running program to air continually in the Los Angeles area, almost 50 years after production ended. Ironically, the series is currently aired on KTTV, which had given up the CBS affiliation several months before I Love Lucy premiered.[citation needed] In the US, reruns have aired nationally on Nick at Nite and TV Land in addition to local channels. This is particularly notable because, unlike some shows to which a cable channel is given exclusive rights to maximize ratings, Lucy has been consistently, and successfully, broadcast on multiple channels simultaneously. The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center in Jamestown, New York is a museum memorializing Lucy and I Love Lucy, including replicas of the NYC apartment set (located in the Desilu Playhouse facility in the Rapaport Center. CBS Home Entertainment has released all six seasons of I Love Lucy on DVD in Region 1, as well as all 13 episodes of The Lucy and Desi Comedy Hour (as I Love Lucy: The Final Seasons - 7, 8, & 9). Bonus features include rare on-set color footage, the "Desilu/Westinghouse" promotional film, as well as deleted scenes and on-air flubs. Initially, the first season was offered in volumes, with four episodes per disc. After the success of releasing seasons 2, 3, and 4 in slimpacks, the first season was re-released as a seven disc set, requiring new discs to be mastered and printed to include more episodes per disc so there would be fewer discs in the set. The individual volume discs for the first season are still in print, but are rare due to lack of shelf space.

I know it seems a little cliché to put I Love Lucy on this list, but I can’t help it: the show is a classic. Hell, it is synonymous with the word “classic,” and its star, Lucille Ball, is synonymous with the word “comedienne.” However, back before Ball had her own TV show, she was synonymous with something else, “B-movies.” In fact, a lackluster movie career had earned her the snarky nickname “Queen Of The Bs” (why they didn’t call her “The Queen B” is beyond me?). But, when she turned to TV, she ruled supreme. A half hour of madcap scheme and bilingual squabbling, I Love Lucy became TV’s first bona fide hit sitcom, pulling in better ratings than the coronation of a real-life queen named Elizabeth. And, more than five decades after its 1951 debut, the sun hasn’t set on Lucy’s empire. Thanks to endless reruns, even casual couch potatoes know the dizzy redhead’s slapstick ballets: Lucy failing to keep up with the conveyor belt at the chocolate factory, stomping grapes at a winery, getting stuck on a balcony in a superman costume and having to be saved by then Superman George Reeves, slurring her way through a Vitameatavegamin commercial, etc. Intoxicating stuff. However, America almost never got to love Lucy at all. While we today may consider the show a classic, we usually forget that I Love Lucy got that way by doing all the things that everyone at the time knew you weren't supposed to do. Think about it. It was the 1950s. You couldn't have a female star who was both attractive and funny. You couldn't have her male lead be an urban Latino (her husband Desi Arnaz, whom Ball insisted play her TV husband when CBS offered her the show; they originally said no but reluctantly changed their minds after Lucy and Desi toured a hit vaudeville version of the show) whose Cuban accent was thicker than a platter of ropa vieja! You couldn't for God's sake build a storyline around a (gasp!) pregnancy! But, the show did anyway, allowing for many actresses that followed her to get their own shows, for many more interracial relationships to be on TV, and for people to be pregnant and do the thing that gets people pregnant on TV. Also, the show was the first to be filmed on 35 mm film, the first to be filmed in front of a live studio audience, the first to use the now-standard three-camera setup, and the first where the stars owned syndication rights (snagging Ball and Arnaz millions of dollars). And then, there was Lucy herself: In some ways, she was a typical 1950s TV housewife, who cooked, cleaned, and tucked her hair under a kerchief. However, the show’s running conceit was that Lucy was ambitious for a showbiz career all her own. How many times did she try to sneak on stage at Ricky’s Tropicana club and then have some ‘splainin’ to do to Ricky? Lucy may have been dizzy, but she wasn’t a dummy. Indeed, one of the stipulations in Arnaz and Ball’s original deal with CBS was that the show’s humor could never hold anyone up to ridicule. And, amazingly, people watched. They kept watching after Lucy had Ricky Jr. They kept watching when the show went off the air still ranked No. 1. And, they keep watching I Love Lucy in rerun after rerun. It just goes to show you that sometimes the greatest sign of a future-classic TV show is that it doesn't look like classic TV.

[Hulk With A Mustache]

5. Seinfeld



Genre: Sitcom.
Created by: Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld.
Executive Producer(s): Fred Barron (Season 1), Larry David (Seasons 2-7), Ben A. Scott, Howard West, George Shapiro, Andrew Scheinman, and Jerry Seinfeld (Seasons 8-9).
Starring: Jerry Seinfeld (Jerry Seinfeld), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Elaine Benes), Michael Richards (Cosmo Kramer), and Jason Alexander (George Costanza).
Country of Origin: United States.
Number of Seasons: 9.
Number of Episodes: 180.
Running Time: 22 minutes.
Original Channel: NBC.
Original Run: July 5, 1989 – May 14, 1998.
Spinoffs: None.

Seinfeld was created by Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David. Seinfeld and David pitched Seinfeld as a "show about nothing," similar to the self-parodying "show within a show" of Season 4 episodes "The Pilot, Part 1" and "Part 2". Seinfeld stood out from the typical family- or coworker-driven TV sitcoms of its time. None of the principal Seinfeld characters were related by blood or worked together. The episodes of most sitcoms revolve around a central theme or contrived comic situations, whereas most episodes of Seinfeld focused on the minutiae of daily life, such as waiting in line at the movies, going out for dinner, buying a suit, and coping with the petty injustices of life. Some people think that the world view presented in Seinfeld is somewhat consistent with the philosophy of nihilism, the idea that life is pointless. Originally, the show began with Jerry Seinfeld delivering his stand-up comedy routine, which was set in a comedy night club. The theme of his act is loosely based on the plot of each episode. Originally, his stand-up act would bookend an episode, for a while even functioning as cutscenes during the show. By Season 4, the cutscenes in the middle of the episodes became less common and by Season 6, the clips that ended the shows also became less common. By Season 8, the stand-up act was cut out entirely as the plots expanded and required more time. The show's main characters, and many secondary characters, were modeled after Seinfeld's and David's real-life acquaintances. Other recurring characters were based on well-known, real-life counterparts, such as the Soup Nazi (based on Soup Kitchen International manager Al Yeganeh), Jacopo Peterman of the J. Peterman catalogue (nominally based on John Peterman), and George Steinbrenner, the owner of the New York Yankees. In most Seinfeld episodes, one story thread is presented at the beginning, involving the characters in separate and unrelated situations. Rapid scene-shifts between story lines move the story forward. By Season 4, the episodes ended by having all of the separate story lines converge, often unexpectedly. Despite the separate plot strands, the narratives reveal "consistent efforts to maintain [the] intimacy" between the small cast of characters. The show kept a strong sense of continuity; characters and plots from past episodes were frequently referenced or expanded upon. Occasionally, story arcs would span multiple episodes and even entire seasons. Larry David, the show's head writer and executive producer for the first seven seasons, was praised for keeping a close eye on minor details and making sure the main characters' lives remained consistent and believable. He would later make use of season-long story arcs in his next series, Curb Your Enthusiasm. The show stood apart from other sitcoms of the time for not placing a shred of importance on the characters learning moral lessons. In effect, the characters are often morally indifferent or callous. It was often said that the mantra of the show's producers was: "No hugging, no learning." The show consisted of four main characters:

Jerry Seinfeld (Jerry Seinfeld): the show's central character who comes across as a "neat freak". He is obsessed with orderliness and is a bit of a "germophobe". In the show, Jerry makes a living as a stand-up comedian. His apartment is the center of a world visited by his eccentric friends George, Elaine, and Kramer. He is often seen as "the voice of reason" amid all the insanity generated by the people in his world. Plot lines often involve Jerry's romantic relationships; he typically finds "stupid reasons" to stop dating women. While seemingly the 'normal' one amongst his friends, his character's neurosis reveals itself in his obsessive cleanliness, narcissism, and steadfast immaturity. His favorite superhero is Superman and there are various references to it in the series.

George Costanza (Jason Alexander): Jerry's best friend since school. He is cheap, dishonest, petty and often jealous of others' achievements. He is often portrayed as a loser who is insecure about his capabilities. He often complains and lies about his profession, relationship, and almost everything else, which usually creates trouble for him later. He often uses an alias ("Art Vandelay"), when lying or assuming a fake identity. George was once succinctly described by Elaine as a "short, stocky, slow-witted, bald man". He fantasizes of being an architect. He often does questionable things which others might also do but often gets caught in the act (such as urinating in a parking garage).

Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus): the intelligent and assertive but superficial girl of the group. She sometimes has a tendency to be very honest with people, which often gets her into trouble. She often gets caught up in her boyfriends' habits, her eccentric employers' unusual demands, and the unkindness of total strangers. A recurring plot line for Elaine is her frustrating inability to find Mr. Right; she also goes through an on/off relationship with David Puddy throughout Season 9. She used to date Jerry, and remains his close friend. One of Elaine's trademark maneuvers is her forceful shove when she receives good or shocking news while rarely using her catch phrase "Get out!" She is notable among sitcom females in that she is not the "straight face" of the show and behaves with much the same conceited attitude as her male friends.

Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards): Jerry's "wacky neighbor" and friend. His trademarks include his humorous upright pompador hairstyle, vintage clothing and his energetic sliding bursts through Jerry's apartment door. Elaine refers to him as a 'hipster doofus'. At times he acts naive, dense, and almost child-like, yet randomly shows astonishing insight into human behavior. Though he never seems to have held a 'real' job, Kramer's wacky schemes, among other unknown sources of money, leave him without any apparent financial issues. He often dreams of ridiculous schemes to make money, some of which include a pizza place where "you make your own pie", a cologne that smells like "the beach", authoring a coffee table book about coffee tables (for which he appeared on Live with Regis and Kathie Lee), and designing a brassiere for men called the "Bro" (or Manssiere according to Frank Costanza). Kramer consistently goes out of his way to help total strangers. Despite being arguably the strangest of the group, Kramer seems to have the most success with the opposite sex.

There are numerous recurring minor characters in Seinfeld. The most prominent are:

Newman (portrayed by Wayne Knight): An overweight, despicable, though curiously erudite postal worker. He is Kramer's accomplice and Jerry's nemesis and is a neighbor of both (Apartment 5E). He will go out of his way to make Jerry's life miserable. He is usually greeted contemptuously by Jerry with "Hello Newman" to which he also mostly responds with "Hello Jerry" in similar fashion. He is typically found plotting against Jerry, eating, and being obnoxious in Jerry's apartment. Newman has an infatuation for Elaine, who finds him repellent but occasionally exploits his attraction to her. He is the most frequently recurring secondary male character, from his first appearance in the show's third season all the way through the last episode.

Morty Seinfeld (originally portrayed by Phil Bruns, but later replaced by Barney Martin) and Helen Seinfeld (portrayed by Liz Sheridan): Jerry's parents, who live in Florida. Morty is a retired raincoat salesman and famous for obstinately sticking to his convictions; Helen cannot understand why anyone would not like her son. They always feel that Jerry is not making enough money and try to help him out financially. These two characters are based on Jerry's biological parents.

Frank Costanza (originally portrayed by John Randolph, replaced by Jerry Stiller) and Estelle Costanza (portrayed by Estelle Harris): George's eccentric parents. George usually blames them for his current mental state and failure to succeed in life. They are known for their violent temper, often leading to yelling and constant verbal fights. They make many appearances from season 4 to 9.

Uncle Leo (portrayed by Len Lesser): Jerry's uncle and Helen's brother. He personifies the eccentric old man and often tries to demean Jerry with comparisons to his own purportedly successful son. He has a habit of grabbing the person with whom he is conversing by the arm. He always brags about his son, Jeffrey (who never makes an appearance on the show), who works for the NYC Parks Department. Uncle Leo is seen in seasons 2 to 9 occasionally.

Susan Ross (played by Heidi Swedberg): George's fiancée and a former NBC executive. She first appeared in season 4 as an NBC executive overseeing Jerry and George's pilot. She and George dated for a while until she "became" a lesbian. She returned in season 7 when she and George got engaged, only to die in the season 7 finale from licking the poisonous glue of their wedding invitation envelopes. She is the most frequently recurring female character in seasons 4 and 7, and has a cameo role in the season 9 episode titled "The Betrayal". She does not get along well with the others- a short-lived friendship with Elaine and Jerry ended when she found their mundane chatter annoying, and she always disliked Kramer, because he had caused her numerous troubles.

George Steinbrenner (voiced by Larry David, portrayed by Lee Bear, who is only seen from behind): George's boss and owner of the New York Yankees. Steinbrenner's face is never shown on the show. He is parodied for his arrogance and lack of touch with the realities of running of a baseball team. A recurring gag is for him to call George into his office, then proceed to ramble on about inane topics as George slowly walks out the door. Topics range from spicy mustard to bomb threats to calzones. In edited scenes, the real George Steinbrenner makes a cameo appearance and goes out with Elaine. The scenes were cut due to time constraints and are available on the season 7 DVD. He usually appears from the finale of season 5 to 9.

J. Peterman (played by John O'Hurley): one of Elaine's eccentric bosses. Peterman owns The J. Peterman Company and Elaine works on the catalog released by the company. Using the florid style of a treasure hunting adventurer, he typically announces his journeys to exotic locations in search of unique clothing. He is usually seen making an appearance from the finale of season 6 to season 9.

Kenny Bania (portrayed by Steve Hytner): a fellow stand up comedian. Jerry hates Bania because he considers him annoying and a "hack." Bania's trademark "Hey Jerry" is often treated by Jerry and his friends with annoyance and indifference. Kenny Bania appears in various episodes throughout seasons 6 through 9.

David Puddy (portrayed by Patrick Warburton): Elaine's on-again, off-again boyfriend. He is a competent auto mechanic, but also an airhead with numerous quirks, most notably his squinting, staring, and insatiable appetite for high fives. He calls himself a Christian and he is known for his short, unapologetic delivery and unflinching assuredness, such as when he delivers his catch phrase "Yeah, that's right". He is seen in seasons 6 and 9.

Jackie Chiles (portrayed by Phil Morris): Kramer's lawyer. He has a secretary named Suzy and sets up appointments for his clients with an unseen "Dr. Bison". He also speaks with a rapid-fire delivery and tends to overuse grandiose adjectives like 'preposterous' and 'outrageous'. Chiles is a caricature of the late Johnnie Cochran. He is seen occasionally in seasons 7 to 9.

Justin Pitt (portrayed by Ian Abercrombie): Usually referred to as "Mr. Pitt," he was Elaine's demanding boss during the sixth season. He hired her because she reminded him of Jackie Onassis. He makes his appearance throughout Season 6 as well as "The Finale."

Tim Whatley (played by Bryan Cranston): Jerry's dentist, he appears in Seasons 6, 8 and 9. Elaine accuses him of regifting in "The Label Maker", and he converts to Judaism and begins to make references to the Jewish people as if he is a lifelong Jew in "The Yada Yada."

Seinfeld violated several conventions of mainstream television. The show, which is often described as "about nothing", became the first television series since Monty Python's Flying Circus to be widely described as postmodern. Several elements of Seinfeld fit in with a postmodern interpretation. The show is typically driven by humor dispersed with superficial conflict and characters with strange dispositions. Many episodes revolved around the characters becoming involved in the lives of others to typically disastrous results. However, regardless of the damage they caused, they never gained anything from the experience and continued to be selfish, egocentric people. On the set, the notion that the characters should not develop or improve throughout the series was expressed as the "no hugging, no learning" rule. This quote is almost referenced in an episode ("The Secret Code") where Kramer says to Jerry, "Well the important thing is, you learned something," to which Jerry replies, "No I didn't." Unlike most sitcoms, there are no moments of pathos; the audience is never made to feel sorry for any of the characters. Even Susan's death in the series elicits no genuine emotions from anyone in the show. The characters were "thirty-something singles ... with no roots, vague identities, and conscious indifference to morals". Usual conventions, such as isolating the characters from the actors playing them and separating the characters' world from that of the actors and audience, were broken. One such example is the story arc in which the characters promote a television sitcom series named Jerry. The show within the show, titled Jerry was much like Seinfeld, in which Seinfeld played himself, and that the show was "about nothing". Jerry was launched in the Season 4 finale, but unlike Seinfeld, it was not picked up as a series. Nearly every episode is based on the writers' real life experiences. For example, "The Revenge" is based on Larry David's experience at Saturday Night Live. "The Contest" and "The Phone Message" are also based on David's experiences. "The Smelly Car" is based on Peter Mehlman's lawyer friend who couldn't get a bad smell out of his car. "The Strike" is based on Dan O'Keefe's dad who made up his own holiday, Festivus. Other stories take on a variety of different turns. "The Chinese Restaurant" consists of the main characters simply waiting for a table throughout the entire episode. "The Boyfriend", revolving around Keith Hernandez, extends through two episodes. "The Betrayal" is famous for using reverse chronology. Also sometimes stories were taken off headlines and rumours that you see in "Notes About Nothing", "Inside Look" and "Audio Commentary" that you can only find on DVD. "The Library" is based on a lone library cop that is the last person before his career ends. "The Maestro", Kramer's lawsuit is roughly similar to the McDonald's coffee lawsuit. "The Outing" is based mainly on rumours that Larry Charles get if he's asked at the time whether Jerry Seinfeld is gay. The Seinfeld community can draw on a large amount of in-slang, "a lexicon of Seinfeldian code words and recurring phrases, that evolved around particular episodes", often called seinlanguage. The characters frequently coin new terms to refer to characteristics of secondary characters, such as "re-gifter", "mimbo", "sidler", "man hands", "close-talker", "low-talker", and "high-talker". The show has propelled many catchphrases such as Yada, Yada, Yada, master of your domain, and Not that there's anything wrong with that into daily life conversations. Another recurring feature of Seinfeld was its use of specific products, especially candy, as plot points. These might be a central feature of a plot (e.g. Junior Mints, Twix, Jujyfruits, Snickers, Nestlé Chunky, Oh Henry! and Pez), or an association of a candy with a guest character (e.g. Oh Henry! bars), or simply a conversational aside (e.g. Chuckles, Twinkies). Non-candy products featured in Seinfeld include Rold Gold pretzels (whose advertisements at the time featured Jason Alexander), Kenny Rogers Roasters (a chicken restaurant chain), Oreo Cookies, Ben & Jerry's, H&H Bagels, Drake's Coffee Cakes, Ring Dings, Pepsi, Mello Yello, Snapple, Bosco Chocolate Syrup, Cadillac, Saab, Ford Escort, Tyler Chicken, Specialized Bicycles, BMW, Volvo, Toyota, Tupperware, Calvin Klein, Klein Bicycles, Ovaltine, Arby's, TV Guide, Trump Tower, the board games Risk, Boggle, Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble, and Battleship, Entenmann's, and the J. Peterman clothing catalog. The computers in Jerry's apartment are always Apple Macintosh; the featured model changed every few seasons to reflect Apple's latest offerings. Also seen throughout the show's run were many different brands of cereal. A notable exception to this pattern is the use of a fictional whiskey brand called "Hennigan's." One product placement, for Snapple, was inserted as a parody of product placement; when offered some by Elaine in the middle of a conversation, the character Babu Bhatt's (owner of a Pakistani restaurant named as "Dream Cafe") brother declines, calling the drink "too fruity." The show's creators claim that they were not engaging in a product placement strategy for commercial gain. One of the motivations for the use of real-world products, quite unrelated to commercial considerations, is the comedy value of funny-sounding phrases and words. "I knew I wanted Kramer to think of watching the operation like going to see a movie," explained Seinfeld writer/producer Andy Robin in an interview published in the Hollywood Reporter. "At first, I thought maybe a piece of popcorn falls into the patient. I ran that by my brother, and he said, 'No, Junior Mints are just funnier.'" Many advertisers capitalized on the popularity of Seinfeld. American Express created a webisode in which Jerry Seinfeld and an animated Superman (voiced by Patrick Warburton, who played the role of David Puddy) into its commercial. Another advertisement featured Jason Alexander in a Chrysler commercial. In this, Alexander behaves much like his character George, and his relationship with Lee Iacocca plays on his George's relationship with George Steinbrenner. Similarly, Michael Richards was the focus of a series of advertisements for Vodafone which ran in Australia where he dressed and behaved exactly like Kramer, including the trademark bumbling pratfalls. The show evolved quite a bit during its 9 year run:

Seasons 1 to 3: The Early Years: The show premiered as The Seinfeld Chronicles on July 5, 1989, on NBC. The pilot was not very well received. After it aired, a pickup by the NBC network did not seem likely and the show was actually offered to Fox, which declined to pick it up. However, Rick Ludwin, head of late night and special events for NBC, diverted money from his budget, and the next four episodes ("Male Unbonding", "The Stakeout", "The Robbery", and "The Stock Tip") were filmed. These episodes were highly-rated as they followed Cheers on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m., and the series was finally picked up. At one point, NBC considered airing these episodes on Saturdays at 10:30PM, but instead gave that slot to a short-lived sitcom, FM. Seinfeld was championed by television critics in its early seasons, even as it was yet to cultivate a substantial audience. Early episodes such as "The Chinese Restaurant", "The Pony Remark", "The Parking Garage", and "The Subway", tended to be more realistic than the later ones, and dealt with the minutiae of daily life, such as getting stuck on the subway or waiting for their turn in a Chinese restaurant. There's even a mini story arc involving Kramer's jacket.

Seasons 4 to 5: Seinfeld's Prime: Season 4 marked the sitcom's entry into the Nielsen Ratings Top 30, coinciding with several popular episodes, such as "The Bubble Boy", "The Outing", "The Airport", and "The Junior Mint". This was the first season to use a story arc, in which Jerry and George try to create their own sitcom, Jerry. Much publicity followed the controversial episode, "The Contest", an Emmy Award-winning episode written by co-creator Larry David, whose subject matter (masturbation) was considered inappropriate for primetime network television. To circumvent this taboo, the word "masturbation" was never used in the script itself, instead substituted by a variety of oblique references. Midway through that season Seinfeld was moved from its original 9 p.m. time slot on Wednesdays to 9:30 p.m. on Thursdays, following Cheers again, which gave the show even more popularity. The show won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1993, beating out its family-oriented competitor Home Improvement, which at the time was a big hit for NBC's rival ABC. Season 5 was also a ratings-hit as it consisted of many popular episodes such as "The Mango", "The Puffy Shirt" starring Wendel Meldrum as the low talker, "The Lip Reader" with Marlee Matlin in the title role, "The Marine Biologist", "The Hamptons", and "The Opposite". Another story arc was used in which George returns to live with his parents for the entire season and later, as well as the creation of a coffee table book by Kramer. The show was again nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series, but lost to the Cheers spin-off Frasier, which was only in its first season. Seinfeld was nominated for the same award every year for the rest of its run but would keep losing to Frasier.

Seasons 6 to 7: Maintaining The Top: With Season 6, Andy Ackerman replaced Tom Cherones as the director of the show. Even so, the series remained well-regarded and produced some of its most famous episodes, such as "The Fusilli Jerry", "The Chinese Woman", "The Jimmy", "The Face Painter", and "The Switch", which finally revealed Kramer's first name, Cosmo. Story arcs used in this season was Elaine working as a personal assistant to her eccentric boss Mr. Pitt, as well as George's parents' separation which ended by the next season. This was also the first season in which Seinfeld reached Number 1 in the Nielsen Ratings. In Season 7, a story arc created this season involved George getting engaged to his former girlfriend Susan Ross, whose last appearance was in Season 4. He spends most of the season regretting the engagement and trying to get out of it. Garnering its highest ratings yet, Seinfeld went on to produce some of its most famous episodes, namely "The Soup Nazi", "The Secret Code", "The Maestro", and "The Rye" among others.

Seasons 8 to 9: Without Larry David: The show's ratings were still going very strong in its final two seasons (8 and 9), but its critical standing suffered. Larry David left at the end of Season 7 (although he continued to voice Steinbrenner in Season 8), so Seinfeld assumed David's duties as showrunner, and, under the direction of a new writing staff, Seinfeld became more of a fast-paced, absurdist show. The humor began to rely heavily on slapstick, and storylines occasionally delved into fantasy, an example being "The Bizarro Jerry", when Elaine is torn between exact opposites of her friends or when Jerry dates a woman who has the now-famed "man hands". Some notable episodes from season 8 include "The Little Kicks" showing Elaine's horrible dancing, "The Yada Yada," "The Chicken Roaster," and "The Comeback." Season 9 included episodes such as "The Merv Griffin Show," "The Butter Shave," "The Betrayal" (the backwards episode), and "The Finale," which was written by Larry David. The last season included a story arc in which Elaine has an on/off relationship with David Puddy. Despite being offered to return for another season, Seinfeld decided to end the show after its ninth season.

After nine years on the air, NBC and Jerry Seinfeld announced on December 26, 1997, that the series would end production the following spring in 1998. The announcement made the front page of all the major New York newspapers, including the New York Times. Jerry Seinfeld was even featured on the cover of Time magazine's first issue of 1998. The series ended with a 75-minute episode (cut down to 60 minutes in syndication, in two parts) written by co-creator and former executive producer Larry David, which aired on May 14, 1998. Before the finale, a one-hour retrospective clip show was aired which included memorable scenes from the show's past nine seasons. It was also the first episode since the finale of Season 7, "The Invitations", to feature opening and closing stand-up comedy acts by Jerry Seinfeld. The finale was filmed in front of an audience of NBC executives and additional friends of the show. The press and the public were shut out of the filming for the sake of keeping its plot secret, and all those who attended the taping of finale signed written "vows of silence." The secrecy only seemed to increase speculation on how the series would end. Various accounts suggested that Jerry and Elaine get married while more cynical fans favored Julia Louis-Dreyfus' suggestion that the foursome die in a car accident. The producers of the show tweaked the media about the hype, spreading a false rumor about Newman ending up in the hospital and Jerry and Elaine sitting in a chapel, presumably to marry. The episode aired on the same day that Frank Sinatra died, and its airing may have been somewhat overshadowed by this event, but nonetheless it enjoyed a huge audience, estimated at 76 million viewers (58 percent of all viewers that night) making it the third most watched finale in television history. However, the finale received mixed reviews from both critics and fans of the show. The actual finale poked fun at the many rumors that were circulating, seeming to move into several supposed plots before settling on its true storyline: a lengthy trial in which Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer are prosecuted for violating a "Good Samaritan law" and are sentenced to jail. The last conversation in this final episode repeats the very first conversation from the pilot episode, discussing the positioning of a button on George's shirt. In the finale, the characters vaguely recall having the conversation before. According to Forbes magazine, Seinfeld's annual earning from the show in 2004 was $267 million. He was reportedly offered $5 million per episode to continue the show into its tenth season but he refused. As of July 2007, he is still the second highest earner in the television industry, earning $60 million a year. The show itself became the first television series to command more than $1 million a minute for advertising–a mark previously attained only by the Super Bowl. Seinfeld has received awards and nominations in various categories throughout the mid-90s. It was awarded the Emmy for "Outstanding Comedy series" in 1993, Golden Globe Award for "Best TV-Series (Comedy)" in 1994 and Screen Actors Guild Award for "Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series" in 1995, 1997 and 1998. Apart from these, the show was also nominated for an Emmy award from 1992 to 1998 for "Outstanding Comedy series", Golden Globe award from 1994 to 1998 for "Best TV-Series (Comedy)", and Screen Actors Guild Award for "Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series" from 1995 to 1998. Louis-Dreyfus, Alexander and Richards have each attempted to launch new sitcoms as title-role characters. Despite decent acclaim and even some respectable ratings, almost every show was cancelled quickly, usually within the first season. This gave rise to the term Seinfeld curse: the failure of a sitcom starring one of the three, despite the conventional wisdom that each's Seinfeld popularity should almost guarantee a strong, built-in audience for the actor's new show. Shows specifically cited regarding the Seinfeld curse are Julia Louis-Dreyfus' Watching Ellie, Jason Alexander's Bob Patterson and Listen Up!, and Michael Richards' The Michael Richards Show. This phenomenon was mocked in Larry David's hit HBO show Curb Your Enthusiasm, in which Larry David brings up the idea to Jason Alexander that he should do a show about Alexander's inability to shake the 'George' title in order to move on with his career. When David and Alexander begin feuding in the show, Larry David takes the idea to Julia Louis-Dreyfus. They plan to work on a show called Aren't you Evelyn? but Larry David blows their chances with every network they meet, causing Julia to bow out of the idea. Since the end of the program, Alexander has acted in film, theater and television, including guest appearances on Larry David's HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm. Julia Louis-Dreyfus also appeared on Curb Your Enthusiasm and has received on-screen and voice credits in television (such as Arrested Development) and the Disney/Pixar animated film A Bug's Life. Louis-Dreyfus stars in the CBS sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine, which debuted in March 2006 to strong ratings and has been consistent ever since. The show was also renewed for a second season. Its 35 episodes make it the longest running show starring a Seinfeld alumnus since Seinfeld ended. Louis-Dreyfus also received an Emmy Award for best lead actress in a comedy series for her role as Christine. In her acceptance speech, Louis-Dreyfus held up her award and exclaimed, "I’m not somebody who really believes in curses, but curse this, baby!" The show was also renewed for its third season, and returned as a midseason replacement through the 2007-08 season. The "Seinfeld curse" was discussed in the opening of Saturday Night Live episode on May 13, 2006, hosted by Louis-Dreyfus; Alexander and Seinfeld also appeared in this episode. Richards continues to appear in new film and television work, as well. In November 2006, controversy arose concerning racial epithets Richards shouted at African-American hecklers during a live comedy club performance in Los Angeles. He apologized for his statements a few days later during an impromptu appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman, which Jerry Seinfeld had arranged to take place during his interview segment. "It's so completely idiotic … It's very hard to have a successful sitcom," Larry David once said of the curse. On the November 1, 2007, episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Jerry Seinfeld mentioned the possibility of filming one last scene, after they leave prison. He mentioned he is far too busy to do it now but did not announce what the scene would entail as it is still a possibility they will do it. In commentary from the final season DVD, Jerry Seinfeld outlines that he and Jason Alexander spoke about this scene being in Monks Coffee Shop, with George saying “That was brutal” in reference to their team's stint in jail. Between 2004 and 2007, each season of Seinfeld was released on DVD. On November 6, 2007, "Seinfeld: The Complete Series" was released on DVD. The set included a 2007 reunion of the four main cast members and Larry David.

Of all the funny phrases associated with Seinfeld (“yada, yada, yada,” “master of your domain,” “sponge-worthy”), one of the funniest has to be “too New York, too Jewish.” That is what dubious NBC execs pronounced when they first saw Jerry Seinfeld’s sitcom back in 1989. It’s hilarious to think that that is what NBC thought about and passed on a show that would go on to become the defining sitcom of the 1990s and one of their most successful shows of all time. Luckily, someone in NBC’s Late Night division saw the pilot, liked it, got four episodes ordered, and made; and the rest is history. During its 8 year run, Seinfeld changed the tone of TV, our Thursday-night plans, and the way we talk. It spawned enough imitators to fill Yankee Stadium, boosted sales of Jujyfruits and Binaca, and even made medical history (a journal reported a Massachusetts fan laughed so hard at the show that he kept fainting). Though, if you really think about it, it is understandable why network executives had their jitters. Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld’s show was a little different. Their basic idea was that the show would be about nothing. Just four emotionally stunted people, the sharp-tongued Elaine (Louis-Dreyfus), the gawky oddball Kramer (Richards), the sublimely self-interested and neurotic George (Alexander), and the blasé straight-man Jerry (Seinfeld), talking innocuous things: how the second button is the most important button on the shirt (“if it’s too high, you look like you live with your mother.”), how to get a table at a Chinese restaurant, why funerals are a good place to take dates (“It’s a golden opportunity to advance the relationship. She’s crying—you put your arms around her.”). It may sound boring, but through Larry David, Seinfeld's what's-the-deal riffs became piercing insights, not trivia. And, there was something to Seinfeld’s nothing: those for people were the most gleefully soulless people in TV history. Even Archie Bunker was a bigot with a heart of gold. Channeled through the Seinfeld characters, David's most dyspeptic ideas about people preferring the misery of others to their own mild inconvenience came off as amusing rather than misanthropic. Commitment-phobe Jerry dumped women nearly every episode for trivial reasons (one had man-hands, one ate peas one at a time, and one had what he thought were fake breasts; by the way, they weren’t fake, but rather they were real and they were spectacular!). Elaine was, as Louis-Dreyfus once said, “a miserable, decrepit old wretch [who] should have here tubes tied.” George rejoiced when his fiancée died! Only Kramer, the high-haired wackball who didn’t know the meaning of the word doorbell, had half a conscience; he was more invasive than truly selfish. Over the years, the quartet broke tube taboo after taboo, mocking deaf people, cancer, football-shaped goiters, and mental retardation. Even masturbation and oral sex slipped onto the airwaves, thinly disguised with masterful euphemisms. It wasn’t exactly safe, family, Tony Danza-type television, but it was precisely Seinfeld’s shocking deviations from formula that separated it from the sea of tapioca. The show gave us a peek at our Jungian dark shadow. It let nothing, neither feelings nor death, get in the way of a punchline. Granted, the last couple of years were somewhat of a letdown. Seinfeld’s trademark four plots, which would always weave seamlessly together, veered toward Carrot Top wackiness. Kramer importing Cubans? C’mon! And, the final episode, where Jerry and crew get sent to jail for the callousness, taught us an unnecessary lesson. But, even at its worst, Seinfeld was as energizing as a bowl of Rice Krispies. And, at its best, Seinfeld was a hearty soup of humor, a layered marble rye of humanity, master of its comic domain. It was real, and it was spectacular. Too New York, too Jewish? Yean, and “The Godfather” was too Italian.

[Hulk With A Mustache]

Tomorrow, numbers 4 and 3. Here are the hints:

Here's Johnny!, and the truth is out there.

[Hulk With A Mustache]

Well, we're almost done with this countdown. But first, here's number 4:

4. The Tonight Show



Genre: Talk Show, Variety Show.
Created by: Sylvester L. Weaver Jr.
Executive Producer(s): Unknown.
Starring: Steve Allen (host 1954–1957), Gene Rayburn (announcer 1954-1957), Skitch Henderson (band conductor 1954-1957, 1962-1966), Jack Lescoulie (host 1957), Al "Jazzbo" Collins (host 1957), Hy Gardner (interviewer 1957), Johnny Guarnieri (bandleader 1957), Mort Lindsey (bandleader 1957), Jack Paar (host 1957–1962), Hugh Downs (1957-1962), Jose Melis (bandleader 1957-1962), Johnny Carson (host 1962–1992), Ed McMahon (announcer 1962-1992), Doc Severinsen (bandleader 1967-1992), Milton DeLugg (bandleader 1966), Jay Leno (host 1992–present), Edd Hall (announcer 1992-2004), John Melendez (2004-present), Branford Marsalis (bandleader 1992-1995), and Kevin Eubanks (bandleader 1995-2009).
Country of Origin: United States.
Number of Seasons: 54.
Number of Episodes: 4,531 (under Carson), 3,489 (under Leno and as of February 1, 2008).
Running Time: 105 minutes (1954-1956, 1957), 60 minutes (1956-1957), 105 minutes (1957-1966), 90 minutes (1967-1980), 60 minutes (1980-1992), 62 minutes (1992-present).
Original Channel: NBC.
Original Run: September 27, 1954 – present.
Spinoffs: None, unless you want to count Late Night, which started airing after The Tonight Show in 1982.

The Tonight Show can date its origins to a local New York program called Broadway Open House, which started in 1950; its format can be traced to New York show hosted by Steve Allen and which premiered in 1953 on what is now WNBC-TV.

The Steve Allen Years (1954-1957): The original host of Tonight was Steve Allen; his announcer was Gene Rayburn. When the show became a success, Allen got a primetime Sunday comedy-variety show, leading him to share Tonight hosting duties with Ernie Kovacs during the 1956–1957 season. To give Allen time to work on his Sunday evening show, Kovacs hosted Tonight on Monday and Tuesday nights, with his own announcer and bandleader. During the later Steve Allen years, regular audience member Miss Miller became such an integral part, she was forced to join AFTRA, the television/radio performers union. Allen and Kovacs departed Tonight in January 1957 after NBC ordered Allen to concentrate all his efforts on his Sunday night variety program, hoping to combat CBS's Ed Sullivan Show's dominance of the Sunday night ratings.

Tonight! America After Dark (1957): Rather than continuing with the same format after Allen and Kovacs' departure from Tonight, NBC changed the show's format to a news and features show, similar to that of the network's popular morning program Today. The new show, renamed Tonight! America After Dark, was hosted first by Jack Lescoulie and then by Al "Jazzbo" Collins, with interviews conducted by Hy Gardner, and music provided by the Lou Stein Trio. This new version of the show was not popular, resulting in a number of NBC affiliates dropping the show.

The Jack Paar Years (1957-1962): In July 1957, NBC returned the program to a talk/variety show format once again, with Jack Paar becoming the new solo host of the show. Under Paar, most of the NBC affiliates which had dropped the show during the ill-fated run of America After Dark began airing the show once again. Paar's era began the practice of branding the series after the host, and as such the program, though officially still called The Tonight Show, was marketed as The Jack Paar Show. Paar also introduced the idea of having guest hosts; one of these early hosts was Johnny Carson. In the late 1950's, it was one of the first regularly scheduled shows to be videotaped in color. On February 11, 1960, Jack Paar walked off his show for a month after NBC censors edited out a segment, taped the night before, about a joke involving a "W.C." (water closet, a polite term for a flush toilet) being confused for a "wayside chapel." Here’s the joke:

An English lady is visiting Switzerland. She asks about the location of the "W.C." The Swiss, thinking she is referring to the "Wayside Chapel", leaves her a note that said (in part) "the W.C. is situated nine miles from the room that you will occupy... It is capable of holding about 229 people and it is only open on Sunday and Thursday... It may interest you to know that my daughter was married in the W.C. and it was there that she met her husband... I shall be delighted to reserve the best seat for you, if you wish, where you will be seen by everyone."
—Censored joke dropped from the February 11, 1960 show.

As he left his desk, he said, "I am leaving The Tonight Show. There must be a better way of making a living than this." Paar's abrupt departure left his startled announcer, Hugh Downs, to finish the broadcast himself. Paar returned to the show on March 7, 1960, strolled on stage, struck a pose, and said, "As I was saying before I was interrupted..." After the audience erupted in applause, Paar continued, "When I walked off, I said there must be a better way of making a living. Well I've looked and there isn't." Jack Paar left the show in March 1962, and Johnny Carson was chosen as his successor. For contractual reasons[specify], Carson could not take over as host until October 1, 1962, and the months between Paar and Carson were taken by a series of guest hosts, including Groucho Marx. The show was broadcast under the title The Tonight Show during this interregnum.

The Johnny Carson Years (1962-1992): Marx introduced Carson as the new host on October 1; Ed McMahon was Carson's sidekick. For all but a few months of its first decade on the air, Carson's "Tonight Show" was based in New York City. In May 1972 the show moved to Burbank, California, (although it was announced as coming from nearby Hollywood) for the remainder of his tenure. When Carson took over from Jack Paar, he inherited a show that was 105 minutes long. The show was structured to have what appeared to be two openings, with one starting at 11:15 p.m. and including the monologue, and another which listed the guests and announced the host again, starting at 11:30. The two openings gave affiliates the option of having either a fifteen-minute or thirty-minute local news show preceding Carson. Since 1959, the show had been videotaped earlier the same broadcast day. As more affiliates introduced thirty minutes of local news, Carson's monologue was being seen by fewer people. To rectify this situation, from February 1965 to December 1966, Ed McMahon and Skitch Henderson began to co-host the first fifteen minutes of the show without Carson, who would then take over at 11:30. Carson would influence the scheduling of reruns in the mid-1970s and, later in 1980, the length of each evening's broadcast by threatening NBC with, in the first case, moving to another network, and in the latter, retiring altogether. In order to enable a shorter work week for himself, Carson began to petition network executives in 1974 that reruns on the weekends be discontinued, in favor of showing them on one or more nights during the week. In response to his demands, NBC began planning a new comedy/variety series to feed to affiliates on Saturday nights that debuted in October 1975 and is still airing as of 2008: Saturday Night Live. Five years later, Carson renewed his contract with a stipulation that the show lose its last half hour; Tom Snyder's Tomorrow expanded to 90 minutes in order to fill the resulting schedule gap. Despite the fact that, a year and a half later, Tomorrow gave way to the hour-long Late Night with David Letterman (1982-1993; replaced by Late Night with Conan O'Brien, also an hour in length), an hour remains the length of Tonight to this day. In 1979, when Fred Silverman was the head of NBC, Carson took the network to court claiming that he had been a free-agent since April of that year. His most recent contract had been signed in 1972, and Carson cited a California law barring certain contracts from lasting more than seven years. NBC claimed that they had signed three agreements since then, and Carson was therefore bound to the network until April 1981. While the case was settled out of court, the friction between Carson and the network remained. Eventually, Carson reached an agreement to appear four nights a week but cut the show from 90 to 60 minutes. In September 1980, Carson's eponymous production company gained ownership of the show. In 1991, the show's start time was delayed by five minutes to allow NBC affiliates to include more commercials during their local newscasts. The show's announcer and Carson's sidekick was Ed McMahon, who from the very first show would introduce Carson with a drawn-out "Heeeeeeeeere's Johnny!" (something McMahon was inspired to do by the over-emphasized way he had introduced reporter Robert Pierrepoint on the NBC Radio show Monitor). McMahon, who had served the same purpose for Carson's ABC game show Who Do You Trust? for five years previously, would remain standing to the side as Carson did his monologue, laughing (sometimes obsequiously) at his jokes, then join him at the guest chair when Carson moved to his desk. The two would usually interact in a comic spot for a short while before the first guest was introduced, sometimes just ribbing each other about Carson's alleged excessive vanity, or McMahon's alleged excessive drinking.

“Unless it appeared as if I was doing it....If I was going to play second fiddle, I wanted to be the Heifetz of second fiddlers...The most difficult thing for me to learn how to do was just sit there with my mouth closed. Many nights I'd be listening to Johnny and in my mind I'd reach the same adlib just as he said it. I'd have to bite my tongue not to say it out loud. I had to make sure I wasn't too funny—although critics who saw some of my other performances will claim I needn't have worried. If I got too many laughs, I wasn't doing my job; my job was to be part of a team that generated the laughs.”

The Tonight Show had a live band for nearly all of its existence. The NBC Orchestra during Carson's reign was led by Skitch Henderson, followed briefly by Milton DeLugg. Starting in 1967 and continuing until Jay Leno took over, the band was led by Doc Severinsen, with Tommy Newsom filling in for him when he was absent or filling in for McMahon as the announcer (which usually happened when a guest host substituted for Carson, which usually gave McMahon the night off as well). Behind the scenes, Fred de Cordova joined The Tonight Show in 1970 as producer, graduating to executive producer in 1984. Carson’s time was also known for several recurring segments, characters, and skits. These included:

Carnac the Magnificent: Carson played a psychic who clairvoyantly divined the answer to a question contained in a sealed envelope. This was to some degree a variation on Steve Allen's recurring "The Question Man" sketch. The answer was always an outrageous pun. "Carnac" examples:

"Billy Graham, Virginia Graham and Lester Maddox" ... "Name two Grahams and a Cracker!"
"Over 105 in Los Angeles" ... "Under the Reagan plan, how old do you have to be to collect Social Security?"
"Debate" ... "What do you use to catch de fish?"
"Camelot" ... "Where do Arabians park their camels?"
"Frathouse" ... "What do you call a Japanese home struck by a meteor?"
"Ghotbzadeh" ... "What do Iranian men do when their wives refuse them by night?"
"S. I. Hayakawa!" ... "Describe the sound made by a man getting his zipper caught in a Waring blender."

The one that garnered the biggest laugh, and Ed McMahon's personal favorite, as he discussed on several talk shows:

"Sis boom bah" ... "Describe the sound made when a sheep explodes."

If the laughter fell short for a too-lame pun (as it often did), "Carnac" would face the audience with mock seriousness and bestow a comic curse: "May a diseased yak befriend your sister!" or "May a rabid holyman bless your nether regions with a power tool!"

Floyd R. Turbo: a dimwitted yokel responding to a TV station editorial. Floyd always spoke haltingly, as though reading from cue cards, and railed against some newsworthy topic, like Secretaries' Day: "This raises the question: kiss my Dictaphone!"

Art Fern: the fast-talking host of a "Tea Time Movie" program, who advertised inane products, assisted by the attractive Matinee Lady, played by Paula Prentiss (late 1960s), Carol Wayne (the most familiar Matinee Lady, 1971-82), Danuta Wesley (1984), and Teresa Ganzel (1985-92). The fake movies Art would introduce usually had eclectic casts ("Ben Blue, Red Buttons, Jesse White, and Karen Black") and nonsensical titles ("Rin-Tin-Tin Gets Fixed, Fixed, Fixed"), followed by a four-second stock film clip before coming back for another commercial. On giving directions to a fake store he was touting, he would show a spaghetti-like road map, sometimes with a literal "fork in the road", other times making the joke, "Go to the Slauson Cutoff...", and the audience would recite with him, "...cut off your Slauson!" The character was previously named "Honest Bernie Schlock" and then "Ralph Willie" when the Tea Time sketches first aired in the mid to late 1960s. At least one surviving pre-1972 Art Fern sketch that originated from New York had its movie show title as "The Big Flick", an amalgam of two movie show titles in use at the time by New York station WOR-TV, The Big Preview and The Flick. On that sketch Lee Meredith was the Matinee Lady.

Aunt Blabby: an old woman whose appearance and speech pattern bore more than a passing resemblance to comedian Jonathan Winters' character "Maude Frickert". A frequent theme would be McMahon happening to mention a word or phrase that could suggest death, as in "What tourist attractions did you check out?," to which Aunt Blabby would respond, "Never say check out to an old person!"

El Mouldo: mysterious mentalist. He would announce some mind-over-manner feat and always fail, although triumphantly shouting "El Mouldo has done it again!" Ed McMahon would take exception, noting El Mouldo's failure. "Did I fail before?" asked El Mouldo. "Yes!," replied McMahon, to which El Mouldo said, "Well, I've done it again!"

Stump the Band: where studio audience members ask the band to try to play obscure songs given only the title. Unlike when this routine was done during the Jack Paar years with the Jose Melis band, Doc's band almost never knew the song, but that did not stop them from inventing one on the spot. Example:

Guest's request: My Dead Dog Rover
Doc Severinsen, singing: "My dead dog Rover / lay under the sun / and stayed there all summer / until he was done!"

The Mighty Carson Art Players: depending on one's point of view, the name was an obvious tribute to or ripoff of radio legend Fred Allen's Mighty Allen Art Players, which spoofed news, movies, television shows, and commercials.

Example: Johnny, dressed as a doctor, starting to talk about some intimate topic (just as in the real ad) and then being hit by cream pies from several directions at once.

The Edge of Wetness: in which Johnny would read humorous plot summaries of a fictional soap opera (such as The Edge of Night) while the camera panned the audience, stopping on an unsuspecting audience member who Carson claimed was, for example, the butler from the soap.

Virtually all of the pre-1970 shows, including Carson's debut as host, were lost to history when, following standard procedure at the time, the extremely expensive videotapes were reused. It was rumored that many other episodes were lost in a fire, but NBC has denied this. Other surviving material from the era has been found on kinescopes held in the archives of the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, or in the personal collections of guests of the program, while a few moments such as Tiny Tim's wedding, were preserved. Longtime New York meteorologist Dr. Frank Field, an occasional guest during the years he was weather forecaster for WNBC, showed several clips of his appearances with Carson in a 2002 career retrospective on WWOR-TV; Field had maintained the clips in his own personal archives. The program archive is virtually complete from 1973 to 1992. A large amount of material from Carson's first two decades of the Tonight Show (1962–1982), (many of it not seen since its original airings) appeared in a half hour "clip/compilation" syndicated program known as Carson's Comedy Classics which aired in 1983. Although no footage is known to remain of Carson's first broadcast as host of The Tonight Show on 1 October 1962, photographs taken that night do survive, as does an audio recording of Carson's first monologue. One of his first jokes upon starting the show was to pretend to panic and say, "I want my Na-Na!" (This recording was played at the start of Carson's final broadcast.) Thirty-minute audio recordings of many of these "missing" episodes are contained in the Library of Congress in the Armed Forces Radio collection. Many 1970s-era episodes have been licensed to distributors of the sort that advertise mail order offers on late-night TV. The later shows are stored in an underground film archive in Kansas. The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson had guest hosts each Monday for most of the show's run and sometimes for entire weeks during Johnny's frequent vacations. Various people served as guest host, some over fifty times. This list is the most frequent guest hosts of the first 21 years of the show's run; however, a complete list would have Joan Rivers, Garry Shandling and Jay Leno well at the front, as they were the permanent guest hosts from 1983–1986, 1986–1987 and 1987–1992, respectively:

Joey Bishop (177 times, mostly in the 1960s)
Joan Rivers (93)
John Davidson (87)
Bob Newhart (87)
David Brenner (70) (Was a guest on the show 158 times, more than anybody else, including Bob Hope)
McLean Stevenson (58)
Jerry Lewis (52, mostly in the 1960s)
David Letterman (51)
David Steinberg (youngest person to host the show; appeared as a guest 130 times, third only to Bob Hope and David Brenner)

Carson himself had been an occasional guest host during the years when Jack Paar was the regular host, and Paar repeatedly claimed he had been the one to suggest to NBC that Carson replace him when he left the show in 1962. Starting in September 1983, Joan Rivers was designated Carson's permanent guest host, a role she had been essentially filling for more than a year before then. In 1986, she abruptly left for her own show on the then new Fox Network. This move and her failure to inform him personally infuriated Carson so much that he banned Rivers from his show, canceling even the three weeks of guest hosting she was scheduled to do in the remainder of the 1985-86 television season. Unfortunately for Rivers, her new show flopped and was quickly canceled, and she never appeared on the show with Carson again. In a CNN interview after Carson's death, Rivers revealed that Carson never spoke to her again, even on the occasion when Rivers confronted him in a Los Angeles restaurant. The program of July 26, 1984, with guest host Joan Rivers, was the first MTS stereo broadcast in U.S. television history; however, only the New York City affiliate of NBC had stereo broadcast capability at that time. NBC transmitted The Tonight Show in stereo sporadically through 1984, and on a regular basis beginning in 1985. As his impending retirement approached, Carson tried to avoid too much sentimentality, but would periodically show clips of some of his favorite moments and revisit with some of his favorite guests. But no one was quite prepared for Carson's next-to-last night, where he hosted his final guests, Robin Williams and Bette Midler. Williams was in top form with his manic energy and stream-of-consciousness lunacy. Midler, in contrast, found the emotional vein of the farewell. After the topic of their conversation turned to Johnny's favorite songs ("I'll Be Seeing You" and "Here's That Rainy Day"), Midler mentioned she knew a chorus of the latter. She began singing the song, and after the first line, Carson joined in and turned it into a touching impromptu duet. Midler finished her appearance when, from center stage, she slowly sang the pop standard "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)." Carson became unexpectedly tearful, and a shot of the two of them was captured by a camera angle from across the set which had never been used before. This penultimate show was immediately recognized as a television classic, and Midler would win an Emmy Award for her role in it. Carson did not have guests on his final episode of The Tonight Show. An estimated 50 million people watched this retrospective show, which ended with him sitting on a stool alone on the stage, curiously similar to Jack Paar's last show. He gave these final words of goodbye:

“And so it has come to this: I, uh... am one of the lucky people in the world; I found something I always wanted to do, and I have enjoyed every single minute of it. I want to thank the gentlemen who've shared this stage with me for thirty years, Mr. Ed McMahon... Mr. Doc Severinsen... and... you people watching, I can only tell you that it has been an honor and a privilege to come into your homes all these years and entertain you—and I hope when I find something that I want to do, and I think you would like, and come back, that you'll be as gracious in inviting me into your home as you have been. I bid you a very heartfelt good night.”

During his final speech, Carson told the audience that he hoped to return to television with another project and that hopefully "will meet with your approval", and a few weeks after the final show aired. It was announced that NBC and Carson had stuck a deal to develop a new series, but ultimately he chose never to return to television with another show of his own. He only gave two major interviews after retiring. One was in 1993, another in 2002. Carson hinted in the December 1993 interview which was with Tom Shales of the Washington Post that he did not think he could top what he had already accomplished. Carson appeared briefly on Bob Hope's 90th birthday special on NBC and did a voiceover as himself on The Simpsons on FOX, both in May 1993. He spoke to David Letterman via telephone on Letterman's Late Show on CBS in November 1993. Carson followed that with an appearance on the Kennedy Center Honors on CBS in December 29, 1993 to receive a lifetime achievement award; He was the first person to receive the honor for working in the field of television. He never spoke and only sat in the balcony with President and Mrs. Clinton and the other honorees. During Letterman's week of shows in Los Angeles on CBS in May 1994, Carson passed by in a car during a skit early in the week and then walked onto the set on a later show to hand Dave the Top Ten list. He never spoke, citing laryngitis afterward but received a long standing ovation from the live audience. It was Carson's last television appearance ever. A few months before Carson's death, Letterman announced that Carson had been sending jokes to the show in the last several years. Johnny Carson died of complications from emphysema on January 23, 2005 at age 79.

The Jay Leno Years (1992-2009): Johnny Carson retired on May 22, 1992, and was replaced by current host Jay Leno amid controversy. David Letterman not only wanted to move into that earlier time slot from his late night spot after The Tonight Show but was also considered by Carson and others as the natural successor (despite Leno having been Carson's permanent guest host for several years). In the years following Carson's retirement until his death in 2005, he never appeared as a guest on Leno's The Tonight Show. Letterman, having had his heart set on the earlier time slot, left NBC and joined CBS. The Late Show with David Letterman, airing in the same slot, has been competing head to head against Leno's The Tonight Show ever since. Conan O'Brien slid into the late night time slot vacated by Letterman, and has himself enjoyed success. Carson died on January 23, 2005. Leno, now the last living host of The Tonight Show, paid tribute to Carson soon after. Leno's incarnation of The Tonight Show has followed the same basic format as that of his predecessors: an opening monologue followed by comedy routines, interviews and performances. Unlike Jack Paar or Johnny Carson, however, as of 2007, Leno has rarely utilized guest hosts, preferring to host the series by himself. There has only been one occasion in which a substitute host has appeared, on May 12, 2003, when Leno traded places with Katie Couric and hosted The Today Show as part of a publicity stunt. The show follows an established six-piece format. The first segment is a monologue by Leno, with quick one-liners about current events and brief comedy sketches occasionally mixed in. Unlike fellow late-night comics David Letterman or Conan O'Brien, Leno, with his background in stand-up comedy, emphasizes the monologue perhaps more than any other segment in the show, usually telling jokes for the first six or ten minutes of the broadcast. The second segment is a full comedy sketch, often a humorous mini-documentary by a "Tonight Show correspondent" (e.g., Ross the Intern or Tom Green), or a trademark of Leno's, like "Headlines." As the nightly broadcast approaches midnight, the first guest appears. The interview is divided into two segments, then followed by the fifth segment, which consists of another interview. The sixth and final segment is almost always a musical performance. However, on some occasions, a stand-up comedian will perform in the last segment, a staple of The Tonight Show. Immediately following the performance segment, Leno walks on camera to thank the performers and bid farewell to the audience. As the closing credits roll on-screen, the gentle strains of the Tonight Show's closing theme music, "Kevin's Country," composed in 1992 by bandleader Kevin Eubanks, play the show off the air. Much like Carson before him, Leno has many known recurring segments:

"Headlines" (Monday): Humorous print items sent in by viewers. These real-life headlines are usually headlines with typographical errors, or unintentionally inappropriate items.

Jaywalking: A pre-taped segment where Leno asks people questions about current news and other topics in public areas around Los Angeles (usually Hollywood Boulevard, Melrose Avenue, or Universal Studios). The segment's name is a play on the host's name and the illegal practice of jaywalking. Most responses are outrageously incorrect (one person believed that Abraham Lincoln was the first president, another could not identify a picture of Hillary Clinton. etc). Howard Stern has said the segment was lifted directly from his radio show.

Battle of the Jaywalk All-Stars: Some of the stupidest "Jaywalkers" are brought back onto the show to be asked simple question to see which one is less dumb. Some of the interviewees prove so popular with viewers that they become regulars on The Tonight Show itself. Such examples are Jaywalk All-Stars Kip and Kim, who have a recurring segment on the show entitled What would Kip and Kim Do?, where people in situations ask them for advice. Their responses are often ridiculous and done to make the audience laugh. Another frequent Jaywalking guest, Angela Ramos, quickly became popular (due to her nasally high-pitched laugh) and joined the show for a time as a correspondent.

The Audience Wants to Know: Selected audience members are chosen to ask Leno questions, and in response, Leno shows a video clip relating to the subject.

Celebrity Interviews: Leno will conduct an interview with a celebrity or recent major news name. The person in question is an obvious parody designed to utilize humorous responses. This often occurs "via satellite," but the character's portions are done on the musical performance part of the stage. Fred Willard and Gilbert Gottfried are the most common actors used for the segment, as well as Steve Bridges impersonating George W. Bush.

Comedic Products: Depending on the season, Leno will bring out comedic spins on gifts, media releases and "inventions that didn't work out." (for example: A Day After Tomorrow home game for the summer months). It also came out in a different iteration, as being supposedly sold through the NBCCC (Nothing But Cheap Crap Channel), with Leno playing the channel's resident host, Bob Johnson.

Ask the Fruitcake Lady: Marie Rudisill, an outspoken older woman and aunt of Truman Capote, responded to questions about relationships, sex and family. She was originally on the show to promote her cookbook about fruitcake. This segment was discontinued after Rudisill's death.

Videos We Found on YouTube: A prototypical Leno segment where he shows amusing videos supposedly found on YouTube. However, the videos are not viewed on YouTube but video files instead.

Howie Mandel: Using a hidden camera, Howie would play practical jokes on average citizens. This bit became much less common after the beginning of Howie's program Deal or No Deal.

Ross the Intern: Ross Mathews, a highly effeminate intern for the show, is sent to participate in special events. As part of a running gag, Leno started introducing Ross as his illegitimate son.
Pitch To America: Whenever a screenwriters convention is held in the U.S., a Tonight Show camera crew sets up an area where screenwriters can walk up and make a pitch for a movie script or television show that he/she has been working on. People sometimes pitch a product.
Stuff We Found on eBay: Leno brings up some of the oddest stuff that he has supposedly found while searching on eBay, and the studio audience must determine whether the object was sold or not.

Pumpcast News: A fake news anchor, played by Timothy Stack, displayed on a TV screen at a gas station harasses and bothers the customers pumping gas.

Pumpernickel Bread Special: A segment where Leno invites celebrity chefs, such as Martha Stewart, to share hilarious recipes.

Duller Image Catalog: Leno will present outrageous and crude products created by the staff. A play on The Sharper Image Catalog.

The Fine Print: At his desk Leno presents regular everyday products but when zoomed in to reveal the fine print there is a message telling what the product's real intentions are (example: a bag of chips that warns if you eat the product you will get fat).

Photo Booth: A real free photo booth is set up at Universal Studios Hollywood and people inside are bothered and made fun of before getting their picture taken. The booth's voice is provided by comedian Kira Soltanovich.

99 Cent Shopping Spree: Leno shows off items collected from a local 99 cent store. These products are real and are shown if they have any assembly mistakes (hair combs in a bag labeled sun glasses), poorly translated words on directions or packaging, or if they are just tacky items.

Celebrity Jeopardy: A jeopardy game that includes people in costumes portraying famous people in the news. George W. Bush, and Martha Stewart, are commonly portrayed. Gilbert Gottfried, who is always included on the panel, portrays other uncommon characters such as the Easter Bunny or Pontius Pilate, and is characterized by his frequent use of the phrase, "Son of a bitch!" at some point during the segment.

Truth in Labeling: Leno displays products whose names have been changed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and are now renamed for their most common uses. For example a United States one hundred-dollar bill called "gas money."

Dealing with the Public: Leno plays real police or 911 audio/video recordings that are ridiculous, stupid or funny.

Sidewalking: A camera and microphone are set up in a public location (e.g., on the street, on a college campus), individuals step up to the microphone and perform whatever they desire.

Teenage Wasteland: Teenagers perform a stunt or talent they possess.

Does this impress Ed Asner?: Individuals perform stunts or show off a talent in front of Ed Asner. Asner comments on whether or not the act impresses him. Similar to the former Late Show with David Letterman stunt, "Is This Anything?".

Midnight Confessions: Members of the audience tell a story about something in their life about which they are embarrassed. Often, at the end of the confession, a product appropriate for the situation is presented to the person (often by Gilbert Gottfried).

Wheel of Consolation: In the final weeks of American Idol the person voted off comes on The Tonight Show and is given a chance to spin the wheel of consolation, which contains three elaborate sounding prizes. The wheel is rigged to stop on a certain item, when the contestant receives a play off of the item won. For example, if the wheel stops on 'Breakfast with Royalty,' the Burger King mascot presents the contestant with a breakfast sandwich.

They Walk Among Us: Leno presents images of celebrities and their supposed look-alikes, who were discreetly taped in Burbank. He says they were products of cloning experiments gone wrong.

Tonight Show phone in: Tapes of celebrity voices are played while 'Jay'talks with them.

Leno’s run as host has had some notable episodes:

In September 2000, with California in an energy crisis that forced power outages, Jay Leno did an episode in the dark using only candles and flashlights known as "The Tonight Show Unplugged" in response to California's power crisis.

Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, The Tonight Show was off the air for about a week, as were most similar programs. The first post-9/11 episode began with a still image of an American flag and a subdued opening without the usual opening credits. Leno's monologue paid tribute to those who lost their lives and to firefighters, police and rescue workers across the US. Leno had questioned whether a show that regularly poked fun at the government could continue after the attacks, but in his monologue he explained that he saw the show as a respite from the grim news of the world, akin to a cookie or glass of lemonade handed to a firefighter.

On July 20, 2006, as Colin Farrell was being interviewed by Leno, Farrell's stalker, Dessarae Bradford, evaded security, walked on stage as cameras were rolling, confronted Farrell, and threw her book on Leno's desk. In front of a silent, stunned audience, Farrell escorted her off the stage himself, told the camera crew to stop filming, and handed her over to security. As Bradford was led out of the studio, she shouted "I'll see you in court!" Farrell's response was a smooth, "Darling, you're insane!" Outside the studio, NBC security handed her off to Burbank police, who eventually released her. While waiting to begin filming again, a shocked Leno sarcastically called for "a round of applause for NBC security" from the audience. After Farrell apologized to the audience, describing Bradford as, "my first stalker," the show then continued filming and the incident was edited out of the broadcast aired that night. Farrell later requested a restraining order in court against Bradford.

On January 2, 2008, The Tonight Show (along with Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Late Night with Conan O'Brien) returned to air without writers, with the WGA still on strike. This was in response to the deal by David Letterman's production company Worldwide Pants with the WGA to allow The Late Show with David Letterman and The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson to return with writers.

On June 13, 2008 Leno delivered the news of Tim Russert's death to his audience during his Monologue, and set aside some time in it to remember his old colleague. Leno then stated that he would continue the show as normal afterwards.

On September 22, 2006, Variety reported that The Tonight Show led in ratings for the 11th consecutive season, with a nightly average of 5.7 million viewers, 31% of the total audience in that time slot, compared to 4.2 million viewers for The Late Show with David Letterman, 3.4 million for Nightline and 1.6 million for Jimmy Kimmel Live. When the Leno show initially directly faced Letterman's show, Letterman initially led in ratings, however the turning episode is generally marked when Hugh Grant appeared on Leno (July 10, 1995). Leno famously asked Grant "What the hell were you thinking?" referring to Grant's arrest for seeing a prostitute. The Tonight Show can be seen in Europe on CNBC Europe as a 30 minute condensed version, Mondays to Fridays at 12 Midnight CET (11PM GMT). The show's full version, 45 minutes in length, is seen weekends at 9PM CET (8PM GMT). The weekday edition features the monologue, interviews with guests and the musical guest. Comedy segments are not shown on weekdays. Monday's show, which is transmitted on Thursdays on CNBC Europe usually has a shortened monologue which is then followed by the comedy segment "Headlines" shown in a condensed version. However recently CNBC Europe have dropped this on occasions when there are big star guests or the monologue proves to be funnier. CNBC Europe used to show the full version of the Tonight Show everyday, but changed to a condensed weekday version on March 26, 2007, to make room for additional business programming. Late Night with Conan O'Brien was also shown on weekdays, but was relegated to weekends only when the business programming expanded. The Tonight Show was broadcast in Italy (with Italian subtitles) until 2005 when RaiSat Extra cancelled the program. The Tonight Show is also seen in India on Zee Cafe Monday to Friday at 11 PM. The Philippine cable TV channel Jack TV also airs the show Tuesday to Saturday at 11PM. Reruns air from Wednesday to Sunday. In the Middle East and North Africa, The Tonight Show can be seen Saturday to Monday at 9PM KSA on the Orbit Satellite Television and Radio Network's channel Super Comedy. In Australia, The Tonight Show airs weeknights at 11PM on The Comedy Channel. In Romania, The Tonight Show can be seen on weeknights, starting 12:25AM on news channel Antena 3. The Tonight Show is seen in Sweden on Kanal 5 Monday to Friday, but always a week after the original airing, to allow time for subtitling. In Canada, The Tonight Show is seen at 11:35 PM ET/PT on A-Channel and 12:00 AM MT/CT on Citytv. In Iceland, The Tonight Show is seen at 11PM on Skjáreinn Monday to Thursday. The Tonight Show also presents a daily digest version of the show, called Last Night on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, broadcast on radio stations nationwide. Originally distributed by Premiere Radio Networks, the radio program moved to Westwood One in 2007.

The Conan O'Brien Years (2009): On September 27, 2004, the 50th anniversary of The Tonight Show's debut, NBC announced that Jay Leno will be succeeded by Conan O'Brien, in 2009. Leno explained that he did not want to see a repeat of the hard feelings and controversy that occurred when he was given the show over David Letterman following Carson's retirement. Leno is reportedly second-guessing his decision to retire in 2009 however, NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker has confirmed that O'Brien will take over as planned, and Leno is in talks to remain with the company. Meanwhile, Tribune Company Chairman/CEO Sam Zell and CEO Randy Michaels have stated to the media during a nationwide tour of Tribune properties that they would like to lure Leno into the Tribune fold as the host of a new late-night program after the end of his run as host of The Tonight Show, by launching it on Tribune stations and using Superstation WGN America as a linchpin for the show. Production of new episodes was suspended due to the 2007 Writers Guild of America strike. Leno, himself a member of the Guild, decided to honor the picket lines, resulting in the show going into repeats, effective November 5. Shortly after the strike started, it was rumored that guest hosts would fill in for Leno during the duration of the strike, beginning November 19, 2007. The show aired reruns from different periods of Leno's tenure as host until January 2, 2008, when after two months the show returned with Leno writing for himself without any replacement writers. It was announced on July 21, 2008 that Jay Leno will host his final episode of The Tonight Show on Friday, May 29, 2009 while Conan O'Brien will take over hosting duties commencing the following Monday, on June 1, 2009.

Music during the show's introduction and commercial segues is supplied by the Tonight Show Band. Skitch Henderson was the band leader during the Steve Allen and early Carson years, followed briefly by Milton DeLugg (who later went on to become the musical director of The Gong Show). Gene Rayburn served as Allen's announcer and sidekick and also guest-hosted some episodes. The Lou Stein Trio provided musical accompaniment during the short run of Tonight: America After Dark, which ran for seven months between the Steve Allen and Jack Paar eras of the Tonight Show. Jose Melis led the band for Jack Paar, and Hugh Downs was his announcer. For most of Johnny Carson's run on the show, the Tonight Show's band, then called "The NBC Orchestra" was led by Doc Severinsen, former trumpet soloist in Henderson's band for Steve Allen. When McMahon was away from the show, Severinsen was the substitute announcer and Tommy Newsom would lead the band. On the rare occasions that both McMahon and Severinsen were away, Newsom would take the announcer's chair and the band would be led by assistant musical director Shelly Cohen. Severinsen's band featured several accomplished sidemen in addition to saxophonist Newsom, including trumpeter Snooky Young, pianist Ross Tompkins, drummer Ed Shaughnessy, trumpeter Bobby Shew, trumpeter Conti Candoli, saxophonist Pete Christlieb, and jazz trumpet legend Clark Terry. The band frequently appeared on camera in the "Stump the Band" segments, where an audience member would dare the band to play some obscure song title, and the band would comically improvise something appropriate. The routine was played for full comedy value and the band was not really expected to know the songs, but on two occasions the band did answer correctly, much to the maestro's surprise. Severinsen was heard to ask incredulously, "You mean we actually...!" The first bandleader during Leno's tenure was Branford Marsalis; he was replaced by Kevin Eubanks in 1995. On March 29, 2004, Leno's long-time announcer Edd Hall was replaced by John Melendez from The Howard Stern Show. The New York Post has reported that Max Weinberg will be joining O'Brien in Los Angeles, though there has been no news whether the rest of The Max Weinberg 7 will accompany him. When the show began it was broadcast live. It began its broadcast at 11:15pm, following an affiliate's 15-minute news broadcast. As more affiliates lengthened their local news programs to 30 minutes, the show began doing two openings, one for the affiliates that joined at 11:15 and another for those who joined at 11:30. On January 12, 1959, the show began to be broadcast on a tape-delayed basis although initially the Thursday night programs were kept live. Color broadcasts began on September 19, 1960. In the late 1960s Johnny Carson insisted that the show's start time be changed to 11:30, eliminating the two-opening practice. The Tonight Show became the first American television show to broadcast with MTS stereo sound in 1984, although sporadically. Regular use of MTS began in 1985. On April 26, 1999, the show started broadcasting in 1080i HDTV, becoming the first American nightly talk show to be shot in that format.

You know, I almost gave this spot to just the Carson years. Then, I figured that would be an insult to the other hosts Steve Allen, Jack Paar, and Jay Leno, since they’ve had some good times as well. But, let’s not kid ourselves: for 30 years, Johnny Carson was the late night king. For millions of Americans, The Tonight Show was a comforting, consistent, comedic lullaby, and every night for three decades, they’d drift off to sleep as a twinkle-eyed, silver-haired Nebraskan swung an invisible golf club, made some alimony jokes, and inspired ho-ho-hos from his eager sidekick. Never again will anyone rule late-night TV as Johnny Carson did. Over the course of 4,531 episodes, Carson turned The Tonight Show into a pre-sleep ritual, launched a thousand stand-up careers, and reached the kind of fame where last names are unnecessary. “Heeeere’s Johnny!” was enough. Of course, as I have mentioned, there was life before Carson. The Tonight Show debuted in 1954 with Steve Allen, a former radio announcer and pianist, as its host. “Steverino” was brilliantly experimental. Years before David Letterman, he liked to set up a mike on the street and banter with anyone who walked by. Hell, once, Allen covered himself in tea bags and took a dip in hot water. When Allen signed off after three years, former game-show host Jack Paar took over. Paar made for riveting and unpredictable TV. Not only did he conduct razor-sharp interviews with the likes of Fidel Castro and Robert F. Kennedy, but he was also prone to on-air meltdowns, crying when guests said something moving. And, when NBC censored a joke about a water closet, he walked off, saying, “There must be a better way to make a living than this.” A month later, Paar returned, starting the show with the words, “As I was saying before I was interrupted…” After Paar walked away for good, NBC turned to Carson, host of a popular (and ungrammatically titled) game show called Who Do You Trust? (It should be Whom Do You Trust?) In contrast to Paar, Carson was a cool ironist with Jack Benny’s sense of timing and a bent for double entendres. His monologues were masterful when they worked, and just as funny when they didn’t (“Did they clear the hall?” he’d ask.). Carson kept the guest segments as light as a soufflé. We watched tarantulas from the San Diego Zoo crawl up his arm and Bette Midler crawl on his desk to serenade him. And, it was under Johnny that The Tonight Show reached its apex as a cool but comfortable late-night hangout. It's a tough balancing act to give a late-night show broad appeal: you're speaking to both the elderly and young night owls, and you need to be relaxed enough to put your viewers to bed without putting them to sleep. Carson was just the right mix of ingenuous Midwesterner and urban sophisticate, in control but self-deprecating, quick-witted but not enervating. His comic style was as smooth as his pantomime golf swing, and he stayed in control even when being climbed by all manner of zoo animals. Ushering viewers from waking life to dreamland, he gave America thirty years of good nights. However, Carson couldn’t host forever. By the late 1980s, Carson was still late-night king, but cable had started to erode network viewership; and life at NBC was getting less and less fun. By 1991, Carson had had enough and casually announced his retirement. The next year, Jay Leno assumed the reins, though him being named host was a controversial move as most people felt that David Letterman should have gotten the job. In fact, Letterman’s Late Show won their initial ratings skirmishes. However, Leno and his barb-free humor eventually won out and put The Tonight Show back on top, where it remains. And, Leno’s time will soon come up; Conan O’Brien is poised to take over in 2009. Then, there will be another host, and another, and another. As Allen said on that very first show, “I want to give you the bad news first. This show is going to go on forever.”

[Hulk With A Mustache]

3. The X-Files



Genre: Science Fiction, Drama, Thriller, Horror, Mystery.
Created by: Chris Carter.
Executive Producer(s): Chris Carter (1993-2002), Kim Manners (1995-2002), Vince Gilligan (1996-2002), Frank Spotnitz (1996-2002), R.W. Goodwin (1993-1998), Howard Gordon (1993-1997), Glen Morgan (1993-1997), James Wong (1993-1997), Michelle Maxwell MacLaren (2000-2002), Michael W. Watkins (1998-2000), and David Greenwalt (1997).
Starring: David Duchovny (Special Agent Fox Mulder), Gillian Anderson (Special Agent Dana Scully M.D.), Mitch Pileggi (Assistant Director Walter S. Skinner), Robert Patrick (Special Agent John Doggett 2000-2002), and Annabeth Gish (Special Agent Monica Reyes 2001-2002).
Country of Origin: United States, Canada.
Number of Seasons: 9.
Number of Episodes: 202.
Running Time: 43 minutes.
Original Channel: FOX.
Original Run: September 10, 1993–May 19, 2002.
Spinoffs: The Lone Gunmen, which featured the characters The Lone Gunmen; Melvin Frohike (Tom Braidwood), John Fitzgerald Byers (Bruce Harwood), and Richard Langly (Dean Haglund), who investigate conspiracy theories. The show was short-lived, only lasting from March to June of 2001. Though, not an official spinoff, the show Millennium had a similar format to The X-Files and was created by Chris Carter, with FBI profiler Frank Black (Lance Henriksen) investigating crimes of a supernatural nature. Millennium was more supernatural than The X-Files; whereas The X-Files had aliens behind the show’s main storyline, Millennium’s main storyline dealt with the Apocalypse. Millennium lasted for three seasons (1996-1999) and had a few crossovers with The X-Files. There were also two X-Files movies: “The X-Files: Fight The Future” (1998) and “The X-Files: I Want To Believe” (2008).

California native Chris Carter, who had previously met with limited success writing for television, was given the opportunity to produce new shows for the Fox network in the early 1990s. Tired of the comedies he had been working on, inspired by a report that 3.7 million Americans may have been abducted by aliens, and recalling memories of Watergate and the 1970s horror series Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Carter came up with the idea for The X-Files and wrote the pilot episode himself in 1992. He initially struggled over the untested concept, executives wanted a love interest for Scully, and casting. The network wanted either a more established or a "taller, leggier, blonder, and breastier" actress for Scully than the 24-year-old Gillian Anderson, a theater veteran with minor film experience, who Carter felt was the only choice after auditions. Nevertheless, the pilot with both Anderson and David Duchovny was successfully shot in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in early 1993, and the show was picked up for the Friday night 9:00 p.m. slot on the American fall TV schedule. Carter started a new company called Ten Thirteen Productions, named after his October 13 birthday, to oversee The X-Files. Carter's idea was to present FBI agents investigating extraterrestrials and paranormal events, but Carter also wanted to deal directly with the characters' beliefs. Carter said, "I think of myself as a non-religious person looking for religious experience, so I think that's what the characters are sort of doing too." Dana Scully, in addition to being the scientific "skeptic" and a trained medical doctor, was open to the Catholic faith in which she was raised; while Fox Mulder, in addition to being an Oxford-educated psychologist and renowned criminal profiler, was the "believer" in space aliens, derisively nicknamed "Spooky Mulder" by his colleagues. Carter said, "Scully's point of view is the point of view of the show. And so the show has to be built on a solid foundation of science, in order to have Mulder take a flight from it... If the science is really good, Scully's got a valid point of view... And Mulder has to then convince her that she's got to throw her arguments out, she's got to accept the unacceptable. And there is the conflict." Carter also felt Scully's role as the more rational partner and Mulder's reliance on guesses and intuition subverted the gender roles usually seen on television. In the pilot episode, Scully is assigned to the X-Files as Mulder's partner, in order to serve as a scientific check on Mulder's belief in the paranormal. In later episodes, it becomes apparent that she was actually set up in that role so that the government conspirators could contain the implications of Mulder's work, which they viewed as a danger to their devious plans. Notably, the powerful shadow government official known only as the Cigarette Smoking Man, or "Cancer Man", appears without any spoken lines in the first and last scenes of the pilot episode; although at that point his ongoing importance to the series had not yet been established. The "unresolved sexual tension" between Mulder and Scully was also a central underlying theme from the beginning, although they were each given other brief romantic interests in future episodes. Carter thought the show should be "plot-driven", and was quoted as saying, "I didn't want the relationship to come before the cases." For example, throughout the series, Mulder and Scully, with rare exception, refer to each other in a professional manner by using each others' last names, rather than calling each other by their first names, which might seem more personal. Carter's superior at FOX, Peter Roth, brought on more experienced staff members from the start, many of whom had previously worked with him at Stephen J. Cannell's production company. Two of the most highly-regarded writers were Glen Morgan and James Wong. Their contributions to the first two seasons, such as the episode "Beyond the Sea", were particularly popular among fans, television critics, the show's actors, and even Carter himself. Morgan and Wong also returned for the first half of the fourth season. Prior to their work on The X-Files, Wong and Morgan had worked extensively with David Nutter, Rob Bowman, and Kim Manners on cop dramas such as The Commish and 21 Jump Street. Nutter, Bowman and Manners all became frequent X-Files directors, with Nutter working on many of the darker episodes in the first three seasons. The duo of Wong and Morgan also had an important role in hiring several supporting actors on the show, as well as John Bartley, the cinematographer who gave The X-Files its early dark atmospheric look, for which he won an Emmy Award in 1996. Bartley left after the third season and was replaced by directors of photography Ron Stannett, Jon Joffin, and ultimately Joel Ransom until the end of the fifth season. The show moved production to Los Angeles beginning with season six. Carter said, "We originally intended to film the pilot in Los Angeles. When we couldn't find a good forest, we made a quick decision to come to Vancouver. As it turned out, it was three weeks that turned into five years. The benefits of being in Vancouver were tremendous." The temperate rainforest climate of Vancouver itself was also seen as crucial to The X-Files, allowing directors to create a mysterious, foggy aura, seen as somewhat similar to that of then-recent TV hit Twin Peaks. Responsibility for casting the show fell to Randy Stone, who had first recommended both leads to Carter, and to Rick Millikan, who predominately used local Canadian actors. The move to Los Angeles was controversial among fans, as many wondered how the show could maintain the dark tone and atmosphere that characterized many of the episodes in the first five seasons. One reason the show moved was because David Duchovny wanted to be closer to his wife, actress Tea Leoni, whom he married in 1997.

Season 1 (1993–1994): In the first two seasons, executive producer Carter and co-executive producers Morgan and Wong, along with other writers, helped to define the show's fledgling story arc. The "mythology", as the producers called it, was initially established as a government plot to cover up anything pertaining to the existence of extraterrestrial life, and Mulder's attempts to discover the fate of his sister, Samantha. He believed that she had been abducted by aliens years prior, when Mulder was a child, which profoundly affected him and ignited his obsession with the paranormal. Carter himself wrote the show's second episode, "Deep Throat", which was directed by Daniel Sackheim. It introduced a character named Deep Throat (played by Jerry Hardin), the first of several secret government informants who would at times help or hinder Mulder and Scully's investigations. "Conduit", the first of many episodes to deal with Mulder's repressed memories of his sister's abduction, was written by Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa. Gordon became another key writer/producer in the show's first four years, also writing "Fallen Angel" and other episodes in the first season with Gansa. That early mythology episode centered on Mulder's futile efforts to discover a crashed UFO which was being covered up by the government. It also introduced UFO enthusiast and abduction victim Max Fenig, one of many idiosyncratic outsiders portrayed on the show, which helped attract an "intensely loyal" cult following. Fenig, played by Scott Bellis, returned for two episodes in the fourth season. Ironically, "Fallen Angel" also received the lowest Nielsen ratings of the first season. Another early and influential mythology effort, the Wong and Morgan-written episode "E.B.E." (for "extraterrestrial biological entity"), which saw Mulder and Scully tracking another crashed UFO, did almost as poorly; it was the fourth least-watched episode of the series overall until its final season. Carter and his writers were mostly left to their own devices because FOX was concentrating on The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. and other shows that they considered more commercially promising at the time. The producers still ran into early opposition on some key episodes, among them "Beyond the Sea," "E.B.E.," and the popular "Ice." According to Carter, "the issue of closure has been an ongoing dialogue with the network, because we've always resisted wrapping up each episode with a neat little bow at the end. You can't do that... because pretending to explain the unexplainable is ridiculous and our audience is too smart for that." Eventually FOX backed down and it was decided "X-File stories would not have forced plot resolutions, but would conclude with some emotional resolution." Morgan and Wong's early influence on X-Files mythology led to their introduction of popular secondary characters who would continue for years in episodes written by others, such as the Scully family, Dana's father William (Don S. Davis), mother Margaret (Sheila Larken), and sister Melissa (Melinda McGraw), as well as conspiracy-buff trio The Lone Gunmen, named after the Warren Commission's disputed theory on the John F. Kennedy assassination. However, the duo's first episode, "Squeeze", was not a part of the mythology. The episode featured Eugene Victor Tooms, an elastic, liver-eating mutant serial-killer who emerged from hibernation every 30 years. After the first two episodes, the writing staff wanted to broaden the concept of The X-Files; executives had initially rejected Carter's idea for a series centered only around alien conspiracies, having already had one at the time, Sightings. "Squeeze" became a template for the paranormal "Monster-of-the-Week" episodes that would be a mainstay of the series. Wong and Morgan followed it up later in the season with a direct sequel called "Tooms." "Tooms" was also the episode where the writers gave the Cigarette Smoking Man his first lines, and introduced FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi), Mulder and Scully's boss. Whilst a relatively in-the-background type character in the 1st season, the character's role and importance in the storyline would evolve over the next seasons, until Skinner became an integral part of the X-Files plot. Initially, The X-Files was fighting for its life in the ratings, and as a result, there was no long-term plan in the beginning to guide its writers. The only guideline provided by Carter was that the show should take place "within the realm of extreme possibility." The show's first season thus featured numerous standalone stories involving monsters, and also diverse alien/government cover-ups, with no apparent connection to each other, such as the Arctic space worms in "Ice," and the conspiracy of genetically engineered twins in "Eve." Carter himself wrote "Space," a low-budget affair about the manifestation of an alien "ghost" in the NASA space shuttle program, which was subject to cost overruns and became the most expensive of the first season; he later called it one of the worst hours ever produced for the show. According to Glen Morgan, the writers were inspired by a glowing New Yorker review noting the show's exploration of "suburban paranoia", and planned for more thematic unity in the second season: "the whole year was to be about the little green men that you and I create for ourselves... because there’re not nuclear missiles pointed at our heads, you can’t consolidate your fears there anymore." However, the plan fell through quickly due to the pressure of the network TV schedule. But by the end of the first season, Carter and his staff had come up with many of the general concepts of the mythology that would last throughout all nine seasons, whose outlines first appeared in Carter's Edgar Award-nominated season finale "The Erlenmeyer Flask", written in early 1994 before he knew whether the show was going to be canceled.[citation needed] In the episode, The X-Files are closed down and Mulder and Scully are to be reassigned. The finale was the first episode directed by R. W. Goodwin, a senior producer (and husband of Sheila Larken, who played Scully's mother on the show) who went on to direct every season opening and closing episode for the next four years. The X-Files was picked up for a second season despite finishing 102nd out of the 118 shows in the U.S. Nielsen ratings. It also received its first Emmy nod, for best title sequence. The electronic theme song in the sequence, featuring eerie whistling sounds, was by Mark Snow and became very well known (club versions of the theme song have reached the pop charts in France, the UK, and Australia, where a remix by Triple X became a number 2 hit in 1996). Snow's music scores for each episode, often dark, synthesized, and ambient, were another distinctive aspect of The X-Files from its earliest years, as the show used more background music than typical of an hour long drama. A soundtrack CD, The Truth and the Light, came out in 1996. The show's mix of genres, the stressful schedule (22 or more episodes per season) and the shooting in different settings each week, required a large and experienced technical crew. At least 300 in Vancouver were under the supervision of producer Goodwin, who called The X-Files "the most difficult show on television" and "the equivalent of making a feature film every eight days". The first year, budgets were at times as low as $1 million. By 1998, its final year in Vancouver, the show cost $2.5 million per episode, most of which was not the stars' salaries. The longtime crew included producers Joseph Patrick Finn and Paul Rabwin, in charge of post-production; production designer and art director Graeme Murray, who won two Emmys for his work on the show; film editor Heather MacDougall, who worked on 51 episodes and won an Emmy for "Kill Switch"; Emmy-nominated editor Stephen Mark, who also edited the 1998 film; sound designer Thierry Couturier, who won two Emmys, and whose son says "I made this" over the Ten Thirteen company logo; Mat Beck, visual effects supervisor (many were created on computer, unusual in early 1990s TV) for 91 episodes and also wrote the episode "Wetwired"; Emmy-nominated makeup artist Toby Lindala; and props master Kenneth Hawryliw, who later co-wrote the episode "Trevor".

Season 2 (1994–1995): As the series ended its first season, a problem had arisen for the producers: the pregnancy of Gillian Anderson, who played Dana Scully. Some network executives wanted the role recast, which Carter refused to do. Another problem arose for Carter, who was unable to finish his planned season opening extravaganza. Morgan and Wong were asked to come up with a lower-key replacement, but their "Little Green Men" was nevertheless the first episode to actually show an alien and got the show's best ratings thus-far (with a 19% audience share). The early part of the second season solidified Mulder and Scully's close relationship, even as the two had been separated on drudgery assignments in different departments when the X-Files had been closed at the end of season one. Due to her pregnancy, Anderson was largely demobilized from active scenes with Duchovny, which matched her character's confinement to teaching medical students at Quantico. During early episodes of season two, Scully is typically pictured only in closeup, at a desk, or conducting autopsies, one of her usual roles on The X-Files due to her training as a medical doctor. The beginning of the second season saw an increasingly frustrated and hopeless Mulder, having been reassigned at the FBI to tedious wiretaps. He also had his prior informant taken away and replaced by the far more reluctant and less friendly Mr. X (Steven Williams), who never fully revealed his true allegiances. Carter's script "The Host" somewhat symbolized Mulder's frustration and loss of hope. In the episode, he is given what he thinks is a dead-end assignment in Newark, New Jersey, literally sifting through sewage, which actually turns out to be an X-file: a giant mutant Flukeman who breeds in nuclear waste. Critics felt The X-Files of this period often consciously resembled classic B-movies in containing environmental and political morals, as in Carter's earlier "Darkness Falls" (about ancient forest bugs who exact revenge on Pacific Northwest loggers), Morgan and Wong's "Blood" (dealing with mind control from electronic devices and pesticide spraying), and Howard Gordon's script for "Sleepless" (about Vietnam veterans who had been guinea pigs in a cruel government experiment in sleep deprivation). Notably, "Blood" was the first episode whose story credit went to Darin Morgan, the actor who had portrayed Flukeman and the brother of writer/producer Glen Morgan (of the Morgan and Wong writing team). "Sleepless" was the second X-Files episode directed by Rob Bowman, who would become one of the most prolific X-Files staff members behind the scenes, directing dozens of episodes as well as the 1998 feature film. "Sleepless" introduced Agent Alex Krycek (Nicholas Lea) as Mulder's new partner. Their partnership would last only into the next two episodes, "Duane Barry" and "Ascension", which proved crucial to the fate of the series. Searching for a solution to the now acute problem of Anderson's pregnancy, Carter and his writers decided to have Scully abducted by Duane Barry (Steve Railsback), himself a likely alien abductee, in the episode, "Duane Barry." The episode was both written and directed by Carter (his debut) and received several Emmy nominations the following year. Anderson was not featured at all in the episode "3," but reappeared when Scully mysteriously returned in Morgan and Wong's "One Breath" (directed by R. W. Goodwin), an episode which consistently scores among the highest in fan ratings. Scully's abduction provoked an existential crisis in Mulder. Although the show left it up in the air for years as to who was directly responsible (aliens, the government, or some combination of both), the earlier episode "Sleepless" had foreshadowed the events with the Cigarette Smoking Man's declaration that "every problem has a solution" (referring to Scully). Scully was now seen to be firmly on Mulder's side in the larger conflict, regardless of her original role as a debunker and her continued skepticism towards the paranormal. After Scully's recovery (and the birth of Anderson's daughter, Piper), Mulder and Scully returned to work on the re-opened X-Files, investigating cases ranging from Haitian zombies ("Fresh Bones") to animal abductions ("Fearful Symmetry") and exorcism ("The Calusari"). This period would see the show gain more mainstream appeal, often earning winning scores during its Friday night timeslot. Its Nielsen ratings rose to their highest peaks thus-far with the occult-themed "Die Hand Die Verletzt" and the epic "Colony"/"End Game." The latter was a two-part episode introducing the idea of colonization, the Alien Bounty Hunter, as well as the characters Bill (Peter Donat) and Teena (Rebecca Toolan) Mulder, Fox Mulder's parents. "Die Hand Die Verletzt" was Morgan and Wong's final X-Files script until the fourth season, as they departed to start their own series Space: Above and Beyond, but at the same time there was new involvement behind the scenes. The episode also marked the X-Files directorial debut of Kim Manners, who would stay with the show until its end and direct the largest number of episodes of the series. On "Colony", star David Duchovny collaborated with Chris Carter on the story, the first of Duchovny's involvements in writing for the show. Frank Spotnitz, a new story editor brought on by Chris Carter, wrote "End Game", the second of the two-part episode; Spotnitz would be a producer and writer on The X-Files and other Ten Thirteen projects for years and had a key role in shaping the mythology. The middle of the second season also saw "Irresistible", an episode directed by David Nutter and written by Chris Carter, which Carter later credited as a blueprint for his even darker show Millennium. This was the first non-paranormal episode of The X-Files, dealing with the trauma of investigating Donnie Pfaster, a "death fetishist" (so named instead of "necrophiliac" to get past the FOX censors). A sequel, "Orison", was made in the seventh season. During its second season, The X Files finished 64th out of 141 shows, a marked improvement from the first season. The ratings were not spectacular, but the series had attracted enough fans to be classified as a "cult hit," particularly by Fox standards. Most importantly it made great gains among the 18-to-49 age demographic sought by advertisers. The show was chosen as Best Television Show of 1994 by Entertainment Weekly and named best drama by the Television Critics Association, and it received seven Emmy nominations, mostly in the technical categories, with one nomination for best drama series. In 1995, The X-Files won a Golden Globe Award for best television drama, winning out over several more established series such as ER, Picket Fences and NYPD Blue. The last weeks of season two brought more changes, beginning what some saw as The X-Files' peak creative period. The Edgar Award-nominated "Humbug", an unconventional standalone episode about a small town inhabited by circus sideshow performers, was the first script fully written by Darin Morgan. At the time it was also considered a risky experiment, as it was the first outright comedy episode. Gillian Anderson famously swallowed a real cricket in one ad-libbed scene. Scully later pulls the cricket out from behind Mulder's ear, explaining that her uncle was an amateur magician. Eventual senior writer Vince Gilligan also offered his first episode, the darker sci-fi "Soft Light," guest starring Tony Shalhoub as a remorseful physicist whose shadow kills people. Season two ended in May 1995 with "Anasazi" (co-written by Carter with David Duchovny), which attracted widespread attention with its cliffhanger ending and put the future of the mythology up in the air. In the episode, Mulder and Scully are contacted by a computer hacker who has gained access to the Majestic-12 documents. Now-free agent Alex Krycek also made his first reappearance since "Ascension". The episode began a three-part arc, the show's most ambitious mythology episodes thus-far, which extended into the third season and centering around Navajo former code talker, Albert Hosteen (Floyd Red Crow Westerman). The show could not afford location filming, so a rock quarry in British Columbia was painted to match the desert hues of the American Southwest. Outside the U.S., The X-Files was by now one of the most popular shows in the world and was being broadcast in (approximately) 60 countries.

Season 3 (1995–1996): Continuing from "Anasazi," "The Blessing Way" and "Paper Clip" opened the third season, bringing in the involvement of former Nazi scientists, formally introducing the leading conspiracy member Well-Manicured Man (John Neville), and containing revelations about both Mulder and Scully's families. Ratings-wise, "The Blessing Way" was the most successful X-Files episode thus far. The third season confirmed the existence of extraterrestrial life within the show and suggested that a shadowy international consortium known as the Syndicate were conspiring with the aliens to colonize Earth. This would be achieved via use of the so-called black oil, introduced in the two-part "Piper Maru"/"Apocrypha." However, the season's other main mythology episodes, "Nisei" and "731", continued to call some of these conclusions into question. Chris Carter began to receive criticism for posing as many questions as answers in the mythology, while the mythology episodes were also praised for their increasingly Hollywood-like production values. "Nisei" received Emmy Awards for its sound editing and mixing. Season three was noted for its wide variety of "monster of the week" episodes. "Pusher", the second effort by writer Vince Gilligan, depicted the cold blooded Robert Patrick Modell, a man who could control people telepathically (a sequel, "Kitsunegari," came two years later in the fifth season). Simultaneously, the show continued to yield darker episodes, such as "The Walk" (a mysterious deadly force in a veterans hospital), "Oubliette" (a metaphysical connection between a recently kidnapped girl and another woman) and "Grotesque" (Mulder's descent into the world of a gargoyle-possessed killer, which received an Emmy for John Bartley's cinematography). Behind the scenes, Darin Morgan continued his involvement with the show, becoming The X-Files' most critically acclaimed writer. Despite intense perfectionism and having been unsatisfied with his well-received "Humbug", Morgan managed to turn in three dark comedy episodes which were considered original for the show. The first of these, "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose", concerned a St. Paul insurance salesman (Peter Boyle) who could predict death. It won Emmys for best writing and guest actor Boyle, and comes in very high in fan polls of favorite episodes. "War of the Coprophages" was Morgan's parody-tribute to H.G. Wells/Orson Welles' War of the Worlds, this time with an infestation of cockroaches driving a town to hysteria. It also mocked the sexual tension between Mulder and Scully by introducing the attractive female entomologist Dr. Bambi Berenbaum. A similar technique was also used in Chris Carter's own "Syzygy," only one week later, leading to what some viewers felt was a comedy overdose. Morgan's third effort of the season, and his final episode as an X-Files script writer, was "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'", which presented multiple perspectives as in Kurosawa's “Rashomon,” and made fun of the X-Files mythology while remaining consistent with it. Graeme Murray and Shirley Inget were nominated for an Emmy for art direction. Morgan would later write a sequel also involving the writer Jose Chung (Charles Nelson Reilly), for Chris Carter's other series, Millennium in 1998. In the spring of 1996, The X-Files began to achieve wide recognition. In addition to its eight Emmy nominations in its third season, of which it won five, it was awarded a George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in television broadcasting. Both David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson were nominated for Screen Actors Guild Awards for the first time, and Anderson won. Both actors were also nominated for Golden Globe Awards. Guest stars in season 3 included Jesse Ventura and Alex Trebek (both "men in black" in "Jose Chung's"), Giovanni Ribisi and Jack Black (in "D.P.O.", about a young man who can control lightning), Lucy Liu and B.D. Wong (in "Hell Money", about mysterious and deadly occurrences in the Chinese immigrant community), JT Walsh (in "The List", about the reincarnation of a death row prisoner), and R. Lee Ermey (in "Revelations", about a stigmatic boy, played by Kevin Zegers, the first of several episodes in the series to deal directly with Scully's Catholic faith). Black, Ribisi and Liu were not widely known at the time they appeared on The X-Files. Dave Grohl also had a cameo in the "Pusher".[65] His rock band, Foo Fighters, were fans of the show, and contributed songs to the compilation album, Songs in the Key of X, released that spring. They also contributed to The X-Files film two years later (see below for other pop culture inspirations). The final part of the season brought the episode "Avatar" (the first episode centered around Mitch Pileggi's Assistant Director Walter Skinner, who was being punished by the Syndicate for his efforts on behalf of Mulder and Scully), "Quagmire" (about a lake monster; the famous "conversation on the rock" between Mulder and Scully was added by script editor Darin Morgan as his last contribution to The X-Files), "Wetwired" (an episode involving a conspiracy to send subliminal messages in TV reception), and season finale "Talitha Cumi", which introduced Jeremiah Smith (Roy Thinnes), an alien with healing powers. The finale had a complex plot, tying back to Mulder's mother's past with the Cigarette Smoking Man. One scene, produced by writers Chris Carter and David Duchovny, was modeled directly after "The Grand Inquisitor" chapter from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. The episode was again a cliffhanger, "to be continued" in the next season.

Season 4 (1996–1997): The next season began with The X-Files' highest ratings success to that point, with "Herrenvolk." The season premiere introduced several new elements to the conspiracy: "killer bees" designed to unleash smallpox, clones and alien hybrids, United Nations Special Representative Marita Covarrubias (played by Laurie Holden), and the removal of a previous important character. Covarrubias became an informer to Mulder and Scully in several episodes in the season, such as "Teliko" and "Unrequited." However it was the horror episode "Home", signaling the return of Morgan and Wong as writers after their canceled Space: Above and Beyond, that was most noticed. "Home" told the story of an inbred family of murderers in rural Pennsylvania, with references to The Andy Griffith Show and grisly violence contrasted with calm, becoming a hit with many fans ("X-Philes") and dividing others. FOX's Standards and Practices department granted it a rare TV-MA "Parental Advisory" rating and refused to ever air it again, though the episode later went into syndication. Two major changes occurred behind the scenes in the autumn of 1996, during the early part of the fourth season. Chris Carter's new series Millennium, also produced in Vancouver, debuted on Friday nights. As a result, The X-Files was moved from Friday night to Sunday, seen as a key to better ratings success, although Carter was initially wary and the decision was controversial with the show's audience. The first episode to air in the new time period was "Unruhe," written by Vince Gilligan and directed by Rob Bowman. It was one of the series' darkest episodes, dealing with a man (played by Pruitt Taylor Vince) who lobotomizes women and can project his fantasies in "thought photography". Gilligan also wrote "Paper Hearts", an emotional episode for Mulder, twisting his memories of his sister's disappearance with a case involving an unrepentant child killer. Wong and Morgan contributed their own, possibly non-canon addition to the mythology, "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man", which referenced Shakespearian history, tied The X-Files to real life conspiracy theories about the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Reverend Martin Luther King, and was the first episode in which neither Mulder or Scully appears on screen (except in flashback). The death of Lone Gunmen member Frohike was originally going to be in the episode, before Carter nixed the idea, but the scene was actually shot by director James Wong. Chris Owens, later to play other roles for the show, first appeared in this episode as the young CSM. The action-oriented "Tunguska" and "Terma" were the more traditional mythology episodes for the autumn sweeps period, sending Mulder and Krycek to a Russian gulag and involving the black oil and the Syndicate closely. X-Files ratings by the middle of the fourth season were as high as they had ever been, and by autumn 1996 it was the FOX network's most popular show. Many episodes of the fourth season were character driven, such as "The Field Where I Died" and "Demons", both about Mulder trying to recover his past, or past lives. "Never Again", Morgan and Wong's final episode of the series, centered on Scully's personal life, with Jodie Foster providing the voice of a tattoo. It had originally been planned as a collaboration with director Quentin Tarantino, but Tarantino was not allowed to work in network television because he was not a member of the Directors Guild of America. The episode was ultimately directed by Rob Bowman, with an homage to Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy. FOX had attained rights to broadcast Super Bowl XXXI in January 1997 and planned to showcase The X-Files in the premier post-game slot. As a result, "Never Again" was bumped to the next week, and "Leonard Betts", a stylish and gory monster-of-the-week episode about an EMT (played by Paul McCrane) who was decapitated and could regrow his body, received the coveted spot (episodes of The X-Files were often aired slightly out of production order). "Leonard Betts" became the all time most-watched X-Files episode, with 17.2 Nielsen rating and 29% audience share. It was also the first episode to be written by the team of Vince Gilligan, John Shiban and Frank Spotnitz, who were responsible for many episodes during the show's middle-to-late era. The air date of "Leonard Betts" became relevant because the final scenes of the episode were central to the ongoing story arc of the show and led directly into the events of "Memento Mori", in which it is revealed that Dana Scully has contracted terminal brain cancer. When originally aired, however, the episode "Never Again" came between these, implying Scully's behavior in that episode was a result of her diagnosis; Gillian Anderson said she would have played the role completely differently if that had been the case. Nevertheless, Anderson's performances during the fourth season "cancer arc" were praised. She won an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 1997, as well as her second straight Screen Actors Guild award and a Golden Globe. "Memento Mori" relied on extended emotional voiceovers, a technique that had become increasingly common in the show over the years, as Scully came to grips with her illness while simultaneously investigating its origins, leading back to her own abduction. Mulder, Walter Skinner and the Cigarette Smoking Man all became dramatically involved, which played out in the later episode "Zero Sum", one of the few episodes of the show not to feature Anderson's involvement, although the events were driven by Scully's worsening condition, as well as the Syndicate's plans for unleashing killer bees. Once Scully had contracted cancer, she continued to work in her former capacity as Mulder's partner investigating X-Files, apparently debilitated only by occasional nosebleeds, though the issue of mortality was again addressed in "Elegy" late in the season. In the intervening time, notable episodes included the two-part "Tempus Fugit" and "Max", in which Max Fenig from season one's "Fallen Angel" returned briefly as the agents investigated mysterious "lost time" in a deadly plane crash, loosely modeled on TWA Flight 800. Amidst what was considered the show's darkest year, "Small Potatoes" provided a lighter tone. The episode was written by Vince Gilligan, and featured departed X-Files writer and former Flukeman Darin Morgan in the role of Eddie Van Blundht, a shape-shifting self-described "loser" who becomes the focus of Scully and Mulder's investigation of a West Virginia town where children are being born with tails. The final scenes of the episode provided "shippers" with the sight of "Mulder" and Scully finally together, the first of many such jokes by the writers in later seasons. Season 4 ended with "Gethsemane", a resolution which appeared to leave one main character near death and kill off the other one, as well as turning his entire belief system into a house of cards.

Season 5 (1997–1998): When season 5 opened, to the show's best numbers ever (with the exception of "Leonard Betts"), it turned out Fox Mulder was still alive, having gone into hiding after becoming involved with Michael Kritschgau, a renegade Department of Defense employee. The continuation of the three-part arc with "Redux" and "Redux II" brought Scully's metastasizing cancer to the fore, as Mulder continued to question his own ideas about aliens and government conspiracies, while working to find a cure to a disease he believes the government gave Scully. Scully is finally cured, though it's unclear what has caused the intervention, and what sacrifices have been made for the end. Skinner's loyalties are in question, and the Cigarette Smoking Man is seemingly put out of commission by the Syndicate. These events were soon followed by Chris Carter's "The Post-Modern Prometheus", which he both wrote and directed. It was the show's only episode filmed entirely in black-and-white, a retelling of the story of Frankenstein (subtitled by author Mary Shelley, The Modern Prometheus), mixed with allusions to Young Frankenstein, Jerry Springer, comic books, David Lynch's The Elephant Man, and Cher. Carter earned his second DGA nomination for his work. A few months earlier in 1997, The X-Files had received its largest awards recognition yet for its fourth season, with 12 Emmy nominations including best drama series, sound mixing, makeup, music, directing, writing, two nominations for editing, and wins for sound editing, art direction, and Anderson. Duchovny was also nominated at both this event and at the Golden Globes, where along with Anderson's win, he won best actor in a TV drama and the show itself won that category for a second year — taking all three top awards. The X-Files also won a second Saturn Award for best genre television series, and Anderson won for best actress; these awards were given by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films. Chris Carter's contract with FOX ran through the fifth season, and he and the stars had originally preferred to stop there, turning The X-Files into a series of films; but the show was such a hit that FOX was intent to continue it on TV in some form, and Carter was convinced to sign a new contract, retaining creative control. In a very rare move for a show still in production, a feature film of The X-Files had been planned by Carter ever since the show achieved commercial success in season two. The film's scripts were printed in red ink on red paper to ensure secrecy by making it impossible to photocopy, and it was largely filmed in California between season four's "Gethsemane" and season five's resumption of the plot with "Redux", pushing back the debut date for the season to November 1997 and resulting in the fifth being (until the ninth) the shortest season, only 20 episodes. As a result, several episodes in season five featured either Scully or Mulder at the expense of the other, to make time for personal projects or re-shoots on the film throughout the season (both stars were now reportedly receiving the same pay, $100,000 per episode). "Christmas Carol" and "Emily," written by the team of Spotnitz, Gilligan and Shiban, were the first mythology episodes mostly centered around Scully. In "Christmas Carol", she receives further information about her abduction, coinciding with the mysterious arrival of a young child into her life. Another result was that two episodes of the season, "Unusual Suspects" and "Travelers", focused on the origins of The Lone Gunmen in 1989 and the origin of the X-File cases at the FBI during the McCarthy era in the 1950s, respectively. Duchovny appears only briefly in the episodes, and Anderson is in neither. Richard Belzer guest starred in "Unusual Suspects", playing Detective John Munch of Homicide & Law & Order: SVU. "Unusual Suspects" was later followed up in the sixth season with "Three of a Kind", and these episodes about Lone Gunmen John Fitzgerald Byers (Bruce Harwood), Richard "Ringo" Langly (Dean Haglund), and Melvin Frohike (Tom Braidwood) later became the basis for a short-lived spinoff in 2001. Early in 1998, the show, largely written by a staff of regulars, aired its first episodes by well-known guest writers. Stephen King contributed "Chinga" (also known as "Bunghoney"), about a demonic doll, which was co-written with Chris Carter and featured Scully investigating the case, between tongue-in-cheek phone conversations with Mulder. The episode, directed by Kim Manners, received mixed reviews. Next up was "Kill Switch", written by cyberpunk author William Gibson along with Tom Maddox. The episode covered issues of virtual reality and received better reception. Then an episode aired where both Mulder and Scully's diverging viewpoints on a vampire case were presented, and humorously contrasted. Vince Gilligan's "Bad Blood", another pairing with "Small Potatoes" director Cliff Bole, was a fan favorite and featured Luke Wilson in a guest role as a young Texas sheriff with or without "buck teeth." In February, the fifth season continued a tradition of mythology episodes in sweeps month and aired the dramatic two-part episodes "Patient X" and "The Red and the Black", the latter of which was again directed by Carter. These dealt with the beginning of colonization, and introduced two new characters, Cassandra Spender (a chronic alien abductee, played by Veronica Cartwright, who was nominated for two Emmys in the role) and her estranged son Jeffrey Spender (a colleague of Mulder and Scully at the FBI, played by Chris Owens). The episodes also juxtaposed Mulder's ongoing crisis of belief in the existence of aliens, with the machinations of the Syndicate and Scully's own personal experiences. Krycek and Covarrubias were involved, while the Cigarette Smoking Man continued to be largely out of the picture during the fifth season. Leading up to the end of the year, more monster of the week episodes were aired, including "Mind's Eye" (guest starring Lili Taylor as a blind woman suspected of murder, and written by season 5 story editor Tim Minear), "The Pine Bluff Variant" (about Mulder's involvement in a plot to spread deadly biological terrorism, with tie-ins to the ongoing mythology) and "Folie à deux" (about Mulder and Scully's investigation into a telemarketing employee who claimed his boss could turn into an insect). David Duchovny had been unhappy with his geographical separation from his wife Téa Leoni, although his discontent was popularly attributed to frustration with climatic conditions in Vancouver. Gillian Anderson also wanted to return home to the United States, and Carter decided to move production to Los Angeles following the fifth season. The season ended in May 1998 with "The End", the final episode shot in Vancouver and the final episode with the involvement of many of the original crew members who had worked on the show for its previous five years, including director and producer R. W. Goodwin and his wife Sheila Larken (who played Margaret Scully and would later return briefly). "The End" introduced Diana Fowley, a new character who had apparently once worked with Mulder on early X-Files, but it focused largely on the efforts of the Syndicate to get control of mind-reading chess prodigy Gibson Praise. The X-Files were closed for a second time in this episode (following season 2). This set up the events of the film, The X-Files, which had just completed post-production and was to open in theatres one month later. The show finished its fifth season with a season Nielsen average of 12.1, its all time peak viewership, and an X-Files record of 16 Emmy nominations (winning two), in addition to winning the Golden Globe for best drama series for the third year. Overall, seasons three to five appear to have marked the show's most popular and acclaimed period.

“The X-Files: Fight the Future” (1998): In summer 1998 the series produced a feature length motion picture, The X-Files, also known as The X Files: Fight the Future. It was intended to be a continuation of the season five finale "The End" (5x20), but was also meant to stand on its own. The season six opener "The Beginning" picked up where the film left off. The majority of the film was shot in the break between the show's fourth and fifth seasons. The film was written by Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz and directed by series regular Rob Bowman. In addition to Mulder, Scully, Walter Skinner and the Cigarette Smoking Man, it featured guest appearances by Martin Landau, Armin Mueller-Stahl, and Blythe Danner as characters that only appeared in the film (though Mueller-Stahl's Conrad Strughold is later mentioned in the series). It also had the last X-Files appearance by John Neville as the Well-Manicured Man. Jeffrey Spender, Diana Fowley, Alex Krycek and Gibson Praise do not appear in the film. The film had a strong domestic opening and got mostly positive reviews from critics. However, its box office dropped sharply after the first weekend. Although it failed to make a profit during theatrical release, due to a very high promotional budget, The X-Files film was more successful internationally. Anderson and Duchovny received equal pay for the film, unlike their original contracts for the series. The worldwide theatrical box office total was $189 million. The film's production cost was close to $66 million, and its advertising budget was similar.

Season 6 (1998–1999): Over the course of the previous two years, the show had built upon the mythology storylines that grew in complexity and prominence (and confusion, especially for new viewers) as the show progressed. The loyalties of the Cigarette Smoking Man and Krycek were continually shifting and the influence of CSM appeared to be waning. Above all, the Syndicate's co-operation with the colonizers was proven to be a ploy, as they were secretly attempting to develop a vaccine to the black oil (also known as "purity") which was shown to be an agent which would allow for the transportation of alien beings, and which would be spread through bees come the time for colonization. However, another alien faction was proven to exist, and these rebels opposed the colonists and the Syndicate for their co-operation. Consequently, in mid-season 6 "full disclosure" episodes "Two Fathers" and "One Son", the rebels destroyed the Syndicate. At the end of The X-Files film, the X-Files had again been re-opened. However, Agents Spender and Fowley were assigned to them rather than Mulder and Scully, who were reassigned from Walter Skinner, who continued to appear on the show, nevertheless, to a new boss, Assistant Director Alvin Kersh (played by James Pickens, Jr.). Gibson Praise was dispatched in the first episode of season 6, "The Beginning" (which also posited a possible alien source for humanity), and Jeffrey Spender was also written out of the show during season 6, while Mimi Rogers' Diana Fowley continued to play a role and appeared quite close to the Cigarette Smoking Man. The latter character was finally given a name, CGB Spender, and an identity, father of Jeffrey and ex-husband of Cassandra. With the move to Los Angeles, California in season 6, many changes behind the scenes occurred, as much of the original X-Files crew was gone. New production designer Corey Kaplan, editor Lynne Willingham, writer David Amann, and director and producer Michael Watkins would stay on for several years. Bill Roe became the show's new director of photography, and episodes generally had a drier, brighter look due to the sunshine and climate of California, as compared with the rain, fog and temperate forests of Vancouver, Canada. Early in the sixth season, the producers took advantage of the new location, setting the show in parts of the country they had not been able to write episodes in previously. For example, Vince Gilligan's "Drive" (about a man subject to an unexplained illness) was a frenetic action episode, unusual for The X-Files, not least due to its setting on roads in the stark desert of Nevada. The "Dreamland" two-parter was also set in Nevada, this time in the legendary Area 51. It marked another comedy outing for the show, in a season increasingly light in tone, with guest star Michael McKean playing man in black Morris Fletcher, who switches bodies with Fox Mulder during the course of the episodes. It is the only non-mythology two part episode of The X-Files. The sixth season also explored the ever-deepening bond between Mulder and Scully. The episode "Triangle" was Chris Carter's fifth try at directing as well as writing The X-Files. With its ambitious mise-en-scène featuring continuous takes and split screens, and its setting on an ocean liner on the eve of World War II (played by RMS Queen Mary anchored in Long Beach, California), it was widely seen as a bid for an Emmy Award, which Carter did not receive, though the episode was up for sound editing. "Triangle" concerned Mulder's trip to the Bermuda Triangle to investigate an X-File there, disobeying superiors such as Kersh, in parallel with Scully and The Lone Gunmen's dogged efforts to locate him, contrasting this with time warp versions of all the main characters in September 1939, and ending with a pivotal "shipper" moment while leaving both the preceding events and the agents' relationship ambiguous. Whether they "should" or "should not" consummate their "platonic" love was a matter of immense debate among the fan community for years, and is still subject to scrutiny, since even after abundant hints Carter refuses to substantiate whether the two characters ever had sex. Other episodes that season, such as "The Rain King", "Monday", "Field Trip", and Carter's "Milagro" and "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas" (guest starring Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin), also dealt primarily with romantic relationships and alternate realities, using these to comment on Mulder and Scully's status. Late in the season, David Duchovny, who had a master's degree in English and considered a career as a writer before joining the cast, contributed his first solo X-Files script, "The Unnatural", which he also directed. It was about Josh "Ex" Exley, a baseball-loving alien who played in the Negro Leagues after the fabled Roswell crash in 1947. A baseball announcer in "The Unnatural" was voiced by famous Los Angeles Dodgers announcer Vin Scully, Chris Carter's original inspiration for the name of Dana Scully. The episode was also originally set to feature the involvement of Darren McGavin, star of early X-Files inspiration Kolchak: The Night Stalker. McGavin had to pull out due to illness, but he does appear as original X-File investigator Agent Arthur Dales in season five's "Travelers" and season six's "Agua Mala" (about Mulder and Scully's discovery of a dangerous water-based life form during a hurricane in Florida). Some longtime fans were alienated by the show in season 6, due to the different tone taken by most stand-alone episodes after the move to Los Angeles. Rather than adhering to the previous style of "monsters of the week", they were often romantic or gently humorous or both, such as "Arcadia", where Mulder and Scully pose as a married couple in a gated community in order to solve a case, or the darker, campy "Terms of Endearment," starring Bruce Campbell as a demon. Meanwhile, some felt there was no coherent plan to the mytharc, that Carter was "making it all up as he goes along." The show ended season 6 with solid ratings, but its lowest average since season two, beginning a decline that would continue for the final three years of its run. This may have been due to different competition on Sunday nights, or because viewers felt the show was burning out or even "jumping the shark" (the show would actually reference the concept in its episode "Jump the Shark" three years later). The show's producers acknowledged they had been trying to do something different from previous years in season six. The X-Files was nevertheless FOX's highest rated show that year, and was nominated for eight Emmys in 1999, winning one for makeup. It was also nominated for SAG Awards for Anderson, Duchovny and Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble Cast, recognizing Pileggi, Pickens, Owens and Davis' continuing contributions. As compared with other seasons, relatively few mythology episodes were made during season 6, only "The Beginning", the stand-alone "S.R. 819" (in which Walter Skinner's health is compromised by a mysterious nanotechnology affliction as possible blackmail to force him to turn against Mulder and Scully), "Two Fathers" and "One Son," and the season finale "Biogenesis," the first of a three-part story continued into season 7, about Scully's investigation of an ancient UFO discovered off the coast of West Africa and effects on Mulder from it.

[Hulk With A Mustache]

Seasons 7 – 9 (1999–2002): In November 1999, "The Sixth Extinction" and its second part "Amor Fati" continued the story arc begun in the previous year. New sixth season director Michael Watkins oversaw the latter episode, which was a writing collaboration between Chris Carter and David Duchovny, harkening back to the themes and characters of previous X-Files history, "Anasazi/The Blessing Way/Paper Clip" and Carter's "Redux" trilogy, as well as to The Last Temptation of Christ. However, it was the lowest rated season premiere since 1994's "Little Green Men." Subsequent offerings like "Millennium" (a crossover with Carter's recently canceled other series), and Vince Gilligan's "Hungry" (a sardonic "monster of the week" in which Mulder and Scully barely appeared) and "X-Cops" (an experimental merging with Fox's reality show COPS), did not substantially improve viewership. "Millennium", however, as well as featuring Lance Henriksen reprising his role of Frank Black for the final time, also made waves for showing the first consensual mouth-to-mouth kiss of Mulder and Scully. The occasion was New Year's 2000. Nick Chinlund also reprised his role of Donnie Pfaster in "Orison", a sequel to season two's "Irresistible," while Ricky Jay played a magician in "The Amazing Maleeni," which contrasted with the generally more emotional tone of season seven. Novelists Tom Maddox and William Gibson returned with a second episode, "First Person Shooter", this time directed by Chris Carter. There were reports of friction between cast and crew, however. David Duchovny, who had filed a lawsuit with Fox Broadcasting that also alleged Carter was paid "hush money" to approve an unfair syndication contract, was reputed to be bored with The X-Files a year after relocating. The show's production costs since the move from Vancouver, typically over $3 million per episode, were also a matter of concern to the network, as it both financed and distributed the show and could not pass off costs to itself without hurting the corporate bottom line. Breaking the formula of standard stand-alone episodes were several efforts written and directed by the show's stars. Gillian Anderson directed her own script for the metaphysical "all things," further exploring Scully's character. It was the first X-Files to be directed by a woman, though the show had had several female writers for periods during seasons 2, 3 and 4 (Carter himself had been subject to a harassment lawsuit years earlier, which was dismissed). Duchovny followed up his prior episode "The Unnatural" with the over-the-top satire, "Hollywood A.D." The title referenced both the Church scandal uncovered therein, and the prospect of Mitch Pileggi's Assistant Director Skinner as a Hollywood player; the self-reflexive episode concerned Skinner's effort to get a blockbuster film made about Mulder and Scully's X-Files investigations, but the "stars" playing the agents are actress Téa Leoni, Duchovny's real life wife as Scully, and comedian Garry Shandling as Mulder. Finally, William Davis, known for his ongoing role as the Cigarette Smoking Man, wrote an episode examining his character, called “En Ami.” It was one of Davis' final appearances in the show. “En Ami” was also director Rob Bowman's final episode for the show. Before the seventh season finale, longtime writer Vince Gilligan also got the chance to direct his first episode, "Je Souhaite" (about a reluctant genie), and Chris Carter turned in the dark slapstick "Fight Club", a return to Carter's roots in comedy. The episode, guest starring Kathy Griffin, did not go over well, particularly so close to what fans expected would be final revelations to the mythology; it became the lowest-voted episode of the series in a survey of viewers. The final three seasons were a time of closure for The X-Files. Characters within the show were written out, including the Cigarette Smoking Man and Mulder's mother, and several plot threads were resolved, including the fate of Fox Mulder's sister Samantha, who had been a long running plot device within the show, in the episodes "Sein Und Zeit" and "Closure." After settling his contract dispute, Duchovny quit full-time participation in the show after the seventh season. This contributed to uncertainties over the likelihood of an eighth season. Carter and most fans felt the show was at its natural endpoint with Duchovny's departure, but it was decided Mulder would be abducted at the end of the seventh season, leaving things open for the actor's return in 11 episodes the following year. Season finale "Requiem" was written by Chris Carter as a possible series finale, but the show was again renewed by Fox, despite lower ratings. For the next two years, Carter was offered incentives to continue the show, which he did despite reservations, concluding there were "more stories to tell." Executive producer and screenwriter Frank Spotnitz was largely responsible, with Carter, for running the show in its final two years, introducing new central characters. With Duchovny's involvement reduced (and in anticipation of Anderson's possible absence in the future), the show's eighth season introduced two new X-Files agents, John Doggett and Monica Reyes (played by Robert Patrick and Annabeth Gish, respectively). Doggett was initially the primary character with Anderson, playing off her in a now-reversed dynamic from The X-Files' earliest seasons, with Scully the "believer" and Doggett the "skeptic," once again investigating paranormal monsters of the week. Carter, Spotnitz, John Shiban, and Vince Gilligan continued to serve as writers, with Kim Manners frequently directing, but otherwise the behind the scenes staff experienced turnover. It was Chris Carter's belief that the series could continue for another ten years with new leads, and the opening credits were accordingly redesigned for the first time in season 9 to emphasize the new actors (along with Pileggi, who was finally listed). This was not to be the case, however, as over the course of the final two seasons, Doggett and Reyes did not provide the ratings boost the producers had hoped for. Following the launch and U.S. commercial failure of spinoff show The Lone Gunmen, whose March 2001 debut episode had dealt with an airplane being hijacked and flown into the World Trade Center, writers were also finding it hard to deal with stock X-Files themes in the wake of the September 11 attacks. The show received meager Emmy attention in its final years, nevertheless picking up a nomination for Bill Roe's cinematography in "This is Not Happening", and a win for makeup in the stand-alone "Deadalive." Robert Patrick won a Saturn Award for Best Actor, however, and the mythology continued to develop, with a new "super soldiers" concept, and the informer Knowle Rohrer, who interacted with Doggett. Cary Elwes also played a new character. Jeff Gulka's Gibson Praise and Chris Owens' Jeffrey Spender eventually made a return, as well as Scully's mother Margaret, played by Sheila Larken (who had not appeared since the show moved from Vancouver in season 5). The show also alluded to religious allegory in a story line about Scully's pregnancy. It was a seeming reversal of earlier seasons' mythology, in which experiments that had given the character her cancer had also left Scully infertile. Duchovny returned over the eighth season for several dramatic episodes, and flashbacks were seen in the ninth. Duchovny also directed an episode. Anderson was nominated for her final Screen Actors Guild award as Dana Scully in 2001. The Mulder/Scully relationship by this point reflected what some "shippers" had imagined for years, although others were dissatisfied or offended by the characterizations. The two were eventually joined by Baby William, Scully's child via an implant related to her abduction, while the crew also offered a tribute to an Internet fan fiction writer who had died from cancer in 2001, creating the character of young FBI Agent Leyla Harrison (a self-professed admirer of Mulder and Scully) to honor her memory in the season 8 episode "Alone" and Season 9 episode "Scary Monsters." The X-Files completed its ninth and final season with the two-hour episode "The Truth", which reunited David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, and much of the original cast. It first aired on May 19, 2002, finishing third in its timeslot (13.2 million viewers) in the Nielsen ratings, with a slightly lower audience share than the original X-Files pilot episode. The show ceased production at the end of the ninth season, on a cliffhanger, though Carter knew that this would be the final episode. Carter's Ten Thirteen Productions also went into hibernation, and actors, writers, producers and technical staff all moved on to other projects. The show's final Emmy nomination in 2002 went to composer Mark Snow.

“The X-Files: I Want To Believe” (2008): “The X-Files: I Want to Believe” is the second movie based on the series, after the original 1998 film adaptation, The X-Files. Filming took place in Vancouver and ended on March 11, 2008. The movie was directed by Carter and co-written by Carter and Frank Spotnitz. It was released in the United States on July 25, 2008.

The X-Files combined continuing serial drama elements, such as those often found in miniseries and soap operas, with individual standalone episodes that did not require a viewer to understand the show's history prior to watching. Due to these differing episode types, fans as well as the show's producers commonly divide X-Files episodes into two categories: "Mythology" or "Mytharc" episodes told the tale of a governmental conspiracy revolving around extraterrestrials.
Standalone or "Monster-of-the-Week" episodes dealt with paranormal creatures and situations, while generally being unrelated to the series mythology. Major mythology episodes were typically presented as season premieres and finales each year, as well as several times throughout most seasons. They made up about one third of the total episodes, and often occurred as two-parters. Below is a list of episodes that tell the mythology story, according to The X-Files Mythology DVD series released in 2005. They are listed in original broadcast order, the same order in which they appear on DVD:

Season 1: Pilot, Deep Throat, Fallen Angel, E.B.E., The Erlenmeyer Flask.
Season 2: Little Green Men, Duane Barry, Ascension, One Breath, Red Museum, Colony, End Game, Anasazi.
Season 3: The Blessing Way, Paper Clip, Nisei, 731, Piper Maru, Apocrypha, Talitha Cumi.
Season 4: Herrenvolk, Tunguska, Terma, Memento Mori, Tempus Fugit, Max, Zero Sum, Gethsemane.
Season 5: Redux, Redux II, Patient X, The Red and the Black, The End.
Season 6: The Beginning, Dreamland, Dreamland II, tithonus, Two Fathers, One Son, Biogenesis.
Season 7: The Sixth Extinction, The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati, Sein und Zeit, Closure, En Ami, Requiem.
Season 8: Within, Without, Per Manum, This is Not Happening, Deadalive, Three Words, Vienen, Essence, Existence.
Season 9: Nothing Important Happened Today, Nothing Important Happened Today II, Trust No 1, Provenance, Providence, William, The Truth.

A few non-mytharc episodes introduced characters that would become pivotal in later mytharc episodes. Sleepless and The Host.

The X-Files directly inspired numerous other TV series, including Strange World, Burning Zone, Special Unit 2, Mysterious Ways, Lost, Carnivàle, Dark Skies, and The Visitor. Some of these included former crew-members of The X-Files, such as Lost, whose cinematographer is John Bartley; the mytharc-dominated 24, executive produced by writer Howard Gordon; Six Feet Under, coproduced by Lori Jo Nemhauser; and Supernatural, involving directors David Nutter and Kim Manners, and writer-producer John Shiban. In Supernatural, Mulder and Scully are specifically referenced in the "Pilot" and the Season 2 episode "The Usual Suspects" in dialogue between the two main characters, Sam and Dean, who often take on detective type roles themselves. Supernatural, like several seasons of the X-Files, is also shot in Vancouver, Canada. The influence can be seen on other levels: television series such as Alias have developed a complex mythology that may bring to mind the "mytharc" of The X-Files. In terms of characterization, the role of Dana Scully was seen as somewhat original, causing a change in "how women [on television] were not just perceived but behaved", and perhaps influencing the portrayal of "strong women" investigators. Many procedural dramas also feature a Mulder-esque lead with a supervisor similar to Skinner or Kersh. Some of these procedurals, such as NCIS, feature a quirky technogeek similar to The Lone Gunmen characters. Musical influence can also be heard in The WB/The CW superhero series Smallville, on which X-Files composer Mark Snow has worked since the show's first episode. Russell T. Davies said The X-Files had been an inspiration on his current British series Torchwood, describing it as "dark, wild and sexy... The X Files meets This Life." Other shows have been influenced by the tone and mood of The X-Files, e.g., Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which drew from the mood and coloring of The X-Files, as well as from its occasional blend of horror and humor. Joss Whedon described his show as a cross between The X-Files and My So-Called Life. As The X-Files saw its viewership expand from a "small, but devoted" group of fans to a worldwide mass audience as digital telecommunications were also becoming mainstream. According to The New York Times, "this may have been the first show to find its audience growth tied to the growth of the Internet." The X-Files was seen to incorporate new technologies into storylines beginning in the early seasons: Mulder and Scully communicated on cellular phones, e-mail contact with secret informants provided plot points in episodes such as "Colony" and "Anasazi", while The Lone Gunmen were portrayed as Internet aficionados as early as 1994. Many X-Files fans also had online access. Fans of the show became commonly known as "X-Philes," a term coined (from the Greek root "-phil-" meaning love or obsession) on an early Fidonet X-Files message board. In addition to watching the show, X-Philes reviewed episodes themselves on unofficial websites, formed communities with other fans through Usenet newsgroups and listservs, and wrote their own fan fiction. As has also become commonplace in television today, episodes never displayed their titles on screen or in TV Guide; the producers disseminated the information via the Internet. In Sweden, X-Files fandom correlated with Internet use. Early ISP:s such as Algonet experienced that logins went down to zero as TV4 syndicated X-files at 9 pm. Unusually for the time, review sites and fan groups were also influential on the producers. Chris Carter claimed to read them: "The show originally [from 1993 to 1996] aired at 9 o'clock on Friday night and at 10 o'clock, I could get on the Internet and see what people thought of it." Writer-producer Glen Morgan also described how he "would come in on Monday and find all these comments from the Internet that you could directly apply to the next episode... When I started out in television, your only input was if your family called you afterwards, they liked the show... What we found out on The X-Files is that there is an intelligent audience that's out there who doesn’t want TV to just wash over them. They want to talk about things." The writing staff were prohibited from reading unsolicited scripts or fan fiction for legal reasons, but an online fan base and their critiques of the show became crucial to its early survival. "Beyond the Sea", a 1994 episode which received acclaim, was made (over the objections of FOX executives) partly because "several fans had written messages criticizing Scully's character... they decided the fans had a point" in asking for more depth. In the episode "E.B.E." from the same period, Deep Throat is "shown to be an unreliable character with questionable motives." According to Morgan, "[the network] thought he was just a guy who should feed Mulder information. We went in with the online comments, which, at the time, were presenting some very challenging, articulate notions about who Deep Throat was and his impact on the show." As a result, FOX aired the episode without forcing any changes. Fans also paid close attention to continuity: "Early on, people were really talking about themes and character, and then they became overwhelmed by people who were totally focused on plot points", according to Morgan. The writers received instant criticism from Internet fans when 1994's "Little Green Men" gave an account of Mulder's sister's abduction that contradicted an earlier episode. Writer Frank Spotnitz came up with the idea for the 1996 mythology episode "Apocrypha" when X-Philes at an X-Files convention reminded him of an unresolved plot thread about Scully's sister. This convention was one of a series of official meetings for fans (known as the "X-Files Expo") organized in various U.S. cities, similar to those of other science fiction shows. The X-Files also "caught on with viewers who wouldn't ordinarily consider themselves sci-fi fans." Chris Carter said the show was plot-driven, while many fans saw it as character-driven. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson were characterized as being "Internet sex symbols." As the show grew in popularity, subgroups of fans developed, such as "relationshippers" hoping for a romantic or sexual partnership between Mulder and Scully, or those who already saw one between the lines. The word "shipper" was first used in this context by online X-Files fans on the popular newsgroup alt.tv.x-files as early as mid-1996, responding to the episode "Pusher" in which Mulder and Scully held hands. Other groups arose to pay tribute to the stars, their characters, and even to a small supporting role, Agent Pendrell, while others joined the subculture of "slash" fiction. As of summer 1996, a journalist wrote, "there are entire forums online devoted to the 'M/S' relationship." In addition to "MOTW" (monster of the week), Internet fans invented acronymns such as "UST" (unresolved sexual tension) and "COTR" (conversation on the rock) to aid in their discussions of the agents' relationship, which was itself identified as the "MSR." The producers did not endorse some fans' readings, according to a study on the subject: "Not content to allow Shippers to perceive what they wish, Carter has consistently reassured NoRomos [those against the idea of a Mulder/Scully romance] that theirs is the preferred reading. This allows him the plausible deniability to credit the show's success to his original plan even though many watched in anticipation of a romance, thanks, in part, to his strategic polysemy. He can deny that these fans had reason to do so, however, since he has repeatedly stated that a romance was not and would never be." The Scully-obsessed writer in Carter's 1999 episode "Milagro" was read by some as his alter ego, realizing that by this point "she has fallen for Mulder despite his authorial intent." Writers sometimes paid tribute to the more visible fans by naming minor characters after them. On July 16, 2008 Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz donated several props from the series and new film to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Some of the items included the original pilot script and the poster "I Want to Believe" from Mulder's office. Chris Carter listed television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, Tales from the Darkside and especially Kolchak: The Night Stalker as his major influences for the show. Carter said, "Remembering that show, which I loved, I said to the FOX executives, 'There's nothing scary on network television anymore. Let's do a scary show.'" Actor Darren McGavin, who played Carl Kolchak in Kolchak: The Night Stalker, appeared in two episodes of The X-Files as Agent Arthur Dales, a character described as the "father of The X-Files." Carter has mentioned that the relationship between Mulder and Scully (platonic but with sexual tension) was influenced by the chemistry between John Steed (Patrick Macnee) and Emma Peel (Diana Rigg) in the 1960s British spy TV program The Avengers. One journalist documented possible influence from Nigel Kneale's Quatermass series and its various television and film iterations. Kneale was invited to write for The X-Files, but declined the offer. The early 1990s cult hit Twin Peaks is seen as a major influence on the show's dark atmosphere and its often surreal blend of drama and irony. David Duchovny had appeared as a cross-dressing DEA agent in Twin Peaks, and the character of Mulder was seen as a parallel to the show's FBI Agent Dale Cooper. Both shows were filmed in the Pacific Northwest. In the pilot episode of The X-Files, the first time Mulder is seen, he's sitting at his desk, and among the clutter on the desk, a framed copy of the Laura Palmer "prom-queen" photo is seen. The producers and writers have cited “All the President's Men,” “Three Days of the Condor,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Rashomon,” “The Thing,” “The Boys from Brazil,” “The Silence of the Lambs,” and “JFK” as influences on the series. Gangster films such as the Godfather trilogy are also frequently referenced in the show's conspiracy plotlines, particularly concerning the Syndicate. A scene at the end of the episode "Redux II" (5X03), for instance, directly mirrors the famous baptism montage at the end of The Godfather. Chris Carter's use of continuous takes in "Triangle" (6X03) was modeled on Hitchcock's Rope. Other episodes written by Carter made numerous references to other films, as did those by Darin Morgan. Over the course of its nine seasons, the show was nominated for 141 awards, winning a total of 61 individual awards from 24 different agencies, including the Emmys, the Golden Globes, the Environmental Media Awards, and the Screen Actors Guild Awards. The X-Files also won a Peabody Award in 1996, during its third season. The show earned a total of 16 Emmys; two for acting, one for writing, and 13 for various technical categories. In September 1994, The X-Files won its first award, the Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Graphic Design and Title Sequences. Peter Boyle later won the Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for his portrayal of the title character in the third-season episode "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose". In the same year, Darin Morgan won the Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing for a Drama Series for the same episode. "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" was one of four highly-acclaimed episodes Morgan wrote during his short time on the show's writing staff. In 1997, both Duchovny and Anderson won Golden Globe awards for the best male and female actors in a drama series. Later that year, Anderson won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. Throughout its run, The X-Files also won Emmy awards in seven technical categories: Graphic Design and Title Sequences, Cinematography, Sound Editing and Mixing, Art Direction, Single Camera Picture Editing, Makeup, and Special Visual Effects. It was additionally nominated for 15 Saturn Awards, and its wins include three for Best Network Television Series, one for Best Actress on Television (Gillian Anderson), and one for Best Actor on Television (Robert Patrick). The first season of The X-Files premiered on September 10, 1993 on Fox Broadcasting. In the United Kingdom it first aired on satellite television channel Sky One January 19, 1994 before being shown to a wider audience on the terrestrial channel BBC2 from September 19, airing at 21:00. Since then, it has expanded into other countries across the world (including Canada, Latin America, New Zealand, Ukraine, Australia, Republic of Ireland, Singapore, Pakistan, the Philippines, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Croatia, Germany, Poland, South Korea, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, South Africa, France, Malaysia, Italy, China, Taiwan, Brazil, Thailand, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Serbia, Bulgaria and Japan),Belgium, either being dubbed or subtitled to accommodate for foreign language viewers. For the first few years of its run, its ratings steadily increased, reaching its zenith in terms of ratings by its fifth season. Season 4's "Leonard Betts" which aired on Fox after the Super Bowl in 1997, holds the record for the highest rated episode in the United States. The next 15 highest Nielsen ratings were for "Redux" (5X02), "Redux II" (5X03), "El Mundo Gira" (4X11), "Herrenvolk" (4X01), "Detour" (5X04), "Small Potatoes" (4X20), "Never Again" (4X13), "Unusual Suspects" (5X01), "Schizogeny" (5X09), "Christmas Carol" (5x05), "Gethsemane" (4X24), "Chinga" (5x10), "Patient X" (5X13), "The Rain King" (6ABX07) and "Emily" (5X07). The show was first syndicated in the U.S. on a Fox-owned cable channel, FX. This arrangement resulted in a 1999 lawsuit from Duchovny, claiming the contract had not been open to fair bidding. The suit was settled out of court. The X-Files reruns subsequently have been shown on TNT and the Sci-Fi Channel, among others. Carter filed his own lawsuit over syndication issues against 20th Century Fox Television on December 30, 2005; this was seen as the main impediment to plans for a second X-Files film. The lawsuit was settled and a second X-Files film was made, entitled The X-Files: I Want to Believe which was released on 25th July 2008. The entire series is currently available on DVD by season. Also available are "mythology" sets which were compilations of episodes that related to its "mytharc" storyline. Forty-eight episodes, selected to represent the best of the show's first four seasons, were also made available on VHS. Video game titles include The X-Files: The Game, The X-Files: Unrestricted Access and The X-Files: Resist or Serve, which expand on the show's storyline. Chris Carter founded Ten Thirteen Productions to produce The X-Files, and later produced other shows under that company name. The shows were often shown to be related to one another, and references from one show to the next were often made:

Millennium:
The X-Files fourth season episode "Never Again": Agent Dana Scully goes to a tattoo parlor at the behest of her new acquaintance Ed Jerse. While there she selects a tattoo called an Ouroboros, a depiction of a serpent, coiled into a circle, eating its own tail. This emblem was the logo for the television series Millennium and the fictional group after which the program is named. The episode was written by Glen Morgan & James Wong, who were frequent contributors to Millennium.

The X-Files seventh season episode "Millennium": Lance Henriksen and Brittany Tiplady make their final appearances as Millennium characters Frank and Jordan Black. Millennium had been canceled earlier that year, after its third season.

Millennium first season episode "Lamentation" (written by Chris Carter): The main character, Frank Black, visits the FBI building and Mulder and Scully are briefly seen descending a stairway. In fact, they are Duchovny and Andersons' stand-ins.

Millennium second season episode "Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense": The writer Jose Chung appears, who was first seen in The X-Files episode, "Jose Chung's From Outer Space". Both episodes were written by Darin Morgan.

Millennium second season episode "The Time Is Now": Character Peter Watts (Terry O'Quinn) picks up a "Morley" cigarette butt, indicating that the nefarious X-Files character, Cigarette Smoking Man, has been lurking in the vicinity recently.

Harsh Realm: This brief 1999 series was based on a comic book series. Gillian Anderson provided voiceovers in the pilot episode, and Terry O'Quinn, who costarred in Millennium and guest starred in several X-Files episodes and the feature film, had a large role. Scott Bairstow, who starred in The X-Files episode "Miracle Man", also had a lead role. In the season 7 X-Files episode "Sein Und Zeit", written by Chris Carter soon after Harsh Realm had been cancelled, a character is seen watching the series on TV. Unlike Millennium and The Lone Gunmen, there is no indication in the produced episodes of this series that it took place in the same universe as The X-Files.

The Lone Gunmen: This show was a short-lived spinoff that revolved around The X-Files' "The Lone Gunmen" characters: John Fitzgerald Byers, Richard Langly (aka "Ringo") and Melvin Frohike. The show occasionally featured guest appearances by The X-Files characters, such as Walter Skinner in the episode "The Lying Game"; and Fox Mulder and Morris Fletcher in the finale episode, "All About Yves". With the cancellation of The Lone Gunmen series coming after a cliffhanger finale, The X-Files episode "Jump the Shark" served as its resolution, showing the trio getting killed while attempting to stop the release of a contagion. It also featured other characters from The Lone Gunmen show.

It was sci-fi writer and ex-surfer Chris Carter’s notion to do a contemporary variation on one of his favorite shows from his youth: the 1974-1975 supernatural series Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Except that where Darren McGavin’s Kolchak was a neurotic loner vainly trying to convince everyone that bad juju exists all around us, it was Carter’s first stroke of genius to give his neurotic loner, Fox Mulder (Duchovny), a female partner, Dana Scully (Anderson), who would provide skepticism, collegial support, and a constant undercurrent of sexual tension (another stroke of genius by Carter was to not make Moonlighting’s mistake and never had Mulder and Scully have sex). Together, working as FBI agents assigned to “X-Files,” unsolved cases involving inexplicable occurrences, Mulder and Scully uncovered not only lots of monsters (vampires, Frankensteinian monsters, nerds with the ability to shot fatal jolts of electricity at their victims), but also a governmental plot of massive proportions (yet another stroke of genius from Carter). The result was far and away the best television sci-fi since The Twilight Zone, and in the consistency of its writing and depth of characterization (well, at least up until the eight season when John Doggett (Patrick) came in after Mulder disappeared), a superior to Rod Serling’s vaunted anthology series. Not a huge it at first, The X-Files managed to spawn a cult following by the second season large enough to give the fledgling FOX network a big boost in both ratings and respect and to turn David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson into TV idols the equal of any in the medium’s history. However, The X-Files proved to be no flash in the media pan. In the aliens-among-us mystery, Carter beautifully melded '60s don't-trust-the-Man paranoia with '90s black-helicopter paranoia and avoided the Twin Peak’s great-first-season-and-let’s-go-crazy implosion. Shot in Vancouver for its first five seasons (production moved to L.A. in 1998), The X-Files has a uniquely dark, dank look to match the bleakness of its message, which flashes across the show’s opening credits: “Trust no one.” A conspiracy theorist’s dream show, The X-Files assumed that the American government is not above colluding with aliens that the show has managed to make that premise seem more credible that absurd. As the series proceeded, Mulder and Scully were surrounded by a supporting cast that came to include their protective boss Walter Skinner (Pileggi), the foreboding Cigarette-Smoking Man (William B. Davis), the trio of oddball computer geniuses called The Lone Gunmen (Tom Braidwood, Dean Haglund, and Bruce Harwood), and Mulder’s archenemy, the savage Agent Alex Krycek (Nicholas Lea). While none of these characters could be called rich in depth, they maintained the show’s air of mystery and unexpectedness. Mulder and Scully are a different matter; soulful and complicated a pair as any heroes that television could offer up. And, yes, the show petered out after Duchovny jumped ship. But for years this conspiracist gem drilled into our reserves of horror and mistrust, and struck black oil. Just don’t get any of that oil on you.

[Hulk With A Mustache]

Tomorrow, numbers 1 and 2. I'm not going to give you any hints. Figure them out yourselves.

[Hulk With A Mustache]

This is it. The final two. The countdown ends tonight. Well, let's get the end started with number 2:

2. The Mary Tyler Moore Show



Genre: Sitcom.
Created by: James L. Brooks and Allan Burns.
Executive Producer(s): James L. Brooks and Allan Burns.
Starring: Mary Tyler Moore (Mary Richards), Edward Asner (Lou Grant), Gavin MacLeod (Murray Slaughter), Ted Knight (Ted Baxter), Valerie Harper (Rhoda Morgenstern 1970-1974), Cloris Leachman (Phyllis Lindstrom 1970-1975), Betty White (Sue Ann Nivens 1973-1977), and Georgia Engel (Georgette Franklin Baxter 1972-1977).
Country of Origin: United States.
Number of Seasons: 7.
Number of Episodes: 168.
Running Time: 30 minutes.
Original Channel: CBS.
Original Run: September 19, 1970 – March 19, 1977.
Spinoffs: The show had three successful spinoffs: Rhoda (1974-1978), which featured Mary’s best friend Rhoda Morgenstern moving back to New York City; Phyllis (1975-1977), which featured Mary’s landlady Phyllis Lindstrom; Lou Grant (1977-1982), which featured Mary’s boss Lou Grant and, unlike The Mary Tyler Moore Show, was a 60 minute drama. There was also a TV movie made in 2000, “Mary and Rhoda,” which had Mary Tyler Moore and Valerie Harper reprising their roles from the TV show.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show was created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns. It starred Mary Tyler Moore as Mary Richards (Moore), a single woman who, at age 30, moves to Minneapolis, Minnesota after breaking off a relationship with her boyfriend of two years. She applies for a secretarial job at TV station WJM-TV, only to find it has already been filled. To her surprise, she is offered the position of associate producer for the Six O'Clock News (which pays $10 a week less than the job she originally sought). At work, she befriends her tough-but-likeable boss Lou Grant (Edward Asner), sympathetic, long-suffering newswriter Murray Slaughter (Gavin MacLeod), the head copy writer, who saves his quips for Ted Baxter's mangling of his news reports, and Sue Ann Nivens' aggressive, man-hungry attitude, and the vain, pompous, dim-witted, buffoonish anchorman Ted Baxter (Ted Knight). Mary's other acquaintances and friends include upstairs neighbor Rhoda Morgenstern (Valerie Harper), a self-deprecating, ex-New Yorker who becomes her best friend, their snobbish, self-involved landlady Phyllis Lindstrom (Cloris Leachman) and her precocious daughter Bess (Lisa Gerritsen). Characters introduced later are the acerbic, man-hungry host of WJM's cooking program, The Happy Homemaker, Sue Ann Nivens (Betty White), and sweet-natured, soft-spoken Georgette Franklin (Georgia Engel), Ted Baxter's girlfriend and then wife. When Moore was first approached about the show, she "was unsure and unwilling to commit, fearing any new role might suffer in comparison with her Laura character in The Dick Van Dyke Show, already cemented as one of the most popular parts in US TV history." It was originally planned for Mary to be a divorcée, but because the network was afraid viewers might think that Mary had divorced Rob Petrie, her character's husband on The Dick Van Dyke Show, the premise was changed to that of simply a broken engagement. Following the end of the series, Asner continued to play the same character in the long-running dramatic series Lou Grant. This is one of the few times in TV history that a situation comedy spun off a dramatic series. In 2005, Asner reprised his character, though never identified as Lou Grant, in commercials for Minneapolis/St. Paul ABC affiliate KSTP's Eyewitness News. Throughout its run, The Mary Tyler Moore Show won 29 Emmys, setting a record that was not broken until 2002, when Frasier earned its 30th. There were several recurring characters on the show. These included:

Gordy Howard (John Amos) (1970 - 73), The station's weather forecaster.
Bess Lindstrom (Lisa Gerritsen) (1970 - 75), Phyllis' precocious daughter.
Ida Morgenstern (Nancy Walker) (1970 - 73), Rhoda's meddling, domineering mother
Martin Morgenstern (Harold Gould) (1972 - 73), Rhoda's father
Marie Slaughter (Joyce Bulifant) (1971 - 77), Murray's wife
Dottie Richards (Nanette Fabray) (1972), Mary's mother
Walter Richards (Bill Quinn) (1972), Mary's father
Edie Grant (Priscilla Morrill) (1973 - 75), Lou's wife. They eventually get divorced.
Andy Rivers (John Gabriel) (1973 - 75), The station's sports reporter, and occasional romantic interest of Mary's.
Flo Meredith (Eileen Heckart) (1975 - 76), Mary's famous journalist aunt. She and Lou are attracted to each other, but they are not willing to compromise their separate careers to build a serious relationship.
David Baxter (Robbie Rist) (1976 - 77), the Baxters' adopted son

The show also had some memorable episodes:

"Love Is All Around" (September 19, 1970) - In the premiere episode, thirty-year-old Mary Richards moves to Minneapolis after rebounding from a broken romance. She finds an apartment in the same large house as her old friend Phyllis Lindstrom and becomes friends with her upstairs neighbor, native New Yorker Rhoda Morgenstern. She applies for a secretarial position at WJM-TV, but gets a job as associate producer for The Six O'Clock News instead (for less pay).

"Support Your Local Mother" (October 24, 1970) - Mary finds herself caught between Rhoda and her mother, when Mrs. Morgenstern, a member of the keep-them-feeling-guilty school of child rearing, comes to Minneapolis for a visit and Rhoda refuses to see her.

"Rhoda the Beautiful" (October 21, 1972) - After dropping twenty pounds, Rhoda reluctantly enters a beauty pageant at work. Though she looks great (even Phyllis compliments her), she still can't get used to thinking of herself as beautiful. The episode won Valerie Harper her third Best Supporting Actress Emmy.

"My Brother's Keeper" (January 13, 1973) - Phyllis wants to set up her visiting brother with Mary, but instead he hits it off with Rhoda and begins spending time with her, to Phyllis's dismay. Rhoda informs Phyllis that he is gay. Though surprised, Phyllis could not care less that her brother is gay, and is simply relieved that there are no romantic feelings between him and Rhoda.

"The Lars Affair" (September 15, 1973) - Phyllis makes a desperate bid to win back her husband Lars when she finds out that he's having an affair with Sue Ann Nivens. Sue Ann was introduced in this episode. This episode was ranked #27 on TV Guides The Greatest Episodes of All Time.

"Chuckles Bites the Dust" (October 25, 1975) - The ludicrous death of WJM's Chuckles the Clown, crushed by an elephant while dressed as Peter Peanut, provokes a torrent of black humor which has everyone in the newsroom but Mary convulsed in laughter. Mary's suppressed laughter comes out at an inopportune moment: at Chuckles' funeral. This episode was ranked #1 on TV Guides The Greatest Episodes of All Time.

"The Seminar" (January 10, 1976) - Mary accompanies Lou to a convention in Washington, DC, where Lou attempts to impress Mary with all the connections that he still has there from his newspaper days. When none of them pan out, Mary begins to feel sorry for Lou, until he receives a call from First Lady Betty Ford (who appears as herself).

"The Last Show" (March 19, 1977) - The new owner of WJM re-evaluates the news operation and, unable to determine the reason for the low ratings, arbitrarily fires everyone in the newsroom except for the supremely incompetent Ted. The curtain call of this episode shows Mary Tyler Moore introducing the other seven regular cast members to the audience as "the best cast ever."

The opening title sequence begins with the title of the series repeated vertically across the screen, followed by a montage of brief shots of Mary, mostly engaging in everyday activities around the city, as the theme song plays. In the final shot, she cheerfully tosses her tam o'shanter in the air in the middle of the street; a freeze frame shot captures her smiling face and the hat in mid-air. The sequence was created by Reza Badiyi who also did the one for Hawaii Five-O. Badiyi came up with the idea for the final shot, which Entertainment Weekly ranked as the second greatest moment in television. An older woman can be seen in the background, obviously puzzled by the sight of a young woman tossing her hat in the air. This unwitting "extra" was Hazel Frederick, a lifelong Minnesota resident who happened to be out shopping the day the sequence was shot. From 1973 to the series' conclusion, Mary is shown washing her car while wearing the #10 home jersey of Minnesota Vikings' quarterback Fran Tarkenton. Tarkenton and the Vikings had played in three Super Bowls around this time, the last in the 1976 season. Some of the scenes show Mary Tyler Moore interacting with crew members. In one, the camera pans over a shot of Mary Richards eating at a restaurant with an older man, the actress' then-husband, Grant Tinker, who served as president of MTM Enterprises until 1981. Another scene shows Mary walking in the park, where she is passed by two joggers: creators James L. Brooks and Allan Burns. In later seasons, Mary is shown looking at a package of meat at a supermarket, then rolling her eyes as she throws it into her shopping cart. This is a reference to the skyrocketing prices of meat during the mid-70's. Scenes showing Mary driving a white 1970 Ford Mustang toward Minneapolis in the first-season sequence were supposedly filmed on Interstate 494 (the Sheraton Bloomington, back then a Radisson, can be seen in the background) and what is now Hennepin County Road 122 (at its interchange with Cedar Ave). The theme song, "Love Is All Around", was written and performed by Sonny Curtis. The lyrics are words of encouragement directed to the character and the first season featured the first verse of the song, which refers to the ending of her relationship and making a fresh start, concluding "You might just make it after all". The more familiar second verse of the song was used in subsequent seasons, with the lyrics affirming her optimistic character, concluding "You're gonna make it after all". The song has been covered by artists such as Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, Christie Front Drive, Sammy Davis Jr., and Hüsker Dü, and was featured in a long-running commercial for Chase bank in the mid-2000s. At the end of the opening sequence of the spin-off Rhoda, the title character flings her hat in the air, but the camera keeps running and the hat falls to the ground in a humorous anti-climax. In The Simpsons episode "And Maggie Makes Three", while working at the bowling alley, Homer Simpson spins around singing, "I'm gonna make it after all!", and tosses a bowling ball in the air. It, of course, lands straight on the ground. The winning musical selection that Peter Griffin plays at the piano competition in the Family Guy episode "Wasted Talent" is the Mary Tyler Moore Show theme. Afterwards, a girl throws her hat in the air and freezes, while those around her look perplexed as to why she is not moving. UK sketch show The All New Alexei Sayle Show parodies the opening credits in its opening sequence, with Alexei Sayle dancing through the streets of London to the theme song 'Life's a Big Banana Sandwich.' The 45th episode of the animated series Animaniacs opens with a skit showing Dot going through strange situations to a parody of song. The show became extremely popular in the Saturday night CBS sitcom lineup. Despite finishing relatively well in the final season, producers argued for its cancellation due to falling ratings, afraid that the show's legacy might be damaged if it were renewed for another season. The series finished strong, and the series finale was arguably the most watched show during the week it aired. The show spun-off three television series: Rhoda (1974-1978), Phyllis (1975-1977) and Lou Grant (1977-1982). Two retrospective specials were produced by CBS: Mary Tyler Moore: The 20th Anniversary Show (1991) and The Mary Tyler Moore Reunion (2002). In 2000, Moore and Harper reprised their roles as Mary and Rhoda in a two-hour ABC made-for-TV reunion movie, Mary and Rhoda. On May 19, 2008, the surviving cast members of The Mary Tyler Moore Show all reunited on the daytime talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show to reminisce about the series. Winfrey, a long admirer of Moore and the show, had her staff recreate the sets of the WJM-TV newsroom and Mary's apartment for the reunion. The first season of the series was released to DVD in North America in 2002, the second in July 2005, and the third on January 17, 2006, with season 4 following on June 20, 2006. From the opening scenes of every episode to the places and events portrayed in the show, Mary Tyler Moore and its setting in Minneapolis are inextricably linked. On May 8, 2002, cable TV network TV Land dedicated a statue of Mary Tyler Moore near the corner of 7th Street and Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis. It captured her iconic toss and was placed near the spot where it occurred (the actual location was in the middle of the street). Although many in the press were skeptical of TV Land's motive at first, some claiming it was a marketing strategy, one Macalester professor stating that it was "like honoring a unicorn" - crowds of onlookers at the unveiling exhibited hushed excitement rather than animosity. Moore herself attended. It has become something of a tourist attraction for fans of the show, who sometimes throw their own hats in front of it. Moore released the cap when her hand was about at waist-level and her hand went high in the air only as a follow-through. The statue by necessity shows her hand high above her head as she is releasing (or possibly catching) the cap. The Dayton's department store in the background of some of those scenes (later a Marshall Field's and now a Macy's) has changed considerably in appearance. In fact, the exact spot where the cap toss occurred was debated extensively, because the layout along Nicollet has changed substantially since the early 1970s due to urban renewal. In 1995, Entertainment Weekly said that "TV's most famous bachelorette pad" was Mary's apartment within a house. For the first few seasons, Rhoda and Phyllis also lived in apartments within the same house, located at 119 N. Weatherly. This address is fictional, with "North Weatherly" being a comment on the city's climate. The exterior of a real house in Minneapolis (in the Kenwood neighborhood, at 2104 Kenwood Parkway) was filmed for regular establishing shots of Richards' house. In the real house, an unfinished attic occupied the space where Mary's apartment was supposedly located. Once fans of the series discovered the place, the house became a popular tourist destination. According to Moore, the woman who lived in the house "was overwhelmed by the people showing up and asking if Mary was around." To discourage crews from filming additional footage of the house, the owners placed an "Impeach Nixon" sign beneath the windows where Mary supposedly lived. This was allegedly the motivation behind Mary Richards' move to the high rise (Riverside Plaza, then known as Cedar Square West), at the start of the 1975 season. Despite this move, the Kenwood neighborhood house continued to attract large numbers of tourists. More than a decade after the show's production ended, the house was still drawing 30 tour buses a day in the summer. In 2005, Don and Patricia Gerlach purchased the house for approximately $1.1 million and began extensive renovations. The third-floor space that was the fictitious setting for Mary's apartment is now a state-of-the-art media room with a plasma TV over the fireplace. The famous shots of Mary walking around a lake (be it in the summer or the winter) were filmed in the "Chain of Lakes" area west of downtown Minneapolis, most notably at the Lake of the Isles, and another shot was taken in Loring Park. The establishing shots of Mary's workplace were of Midwest Plaza at the corner of 8th Street and Nicollet Mall. The IDS Center was still under construction across the street when the most familiar establishing shot was taken. For an update of the opening montage for the fourth season, Mary visited the completed IDS Center and was seen riding the escalator in the Crystal Court and dining with a man at what is now the Mary Tyler Moore table at Basil's Restaurant. In 2006, the manager of Basil's said that his customers still frequently request the table where Mary sat. Other sites were featured on the show, particularly in the opening credits, but since actual filming of the series took place in Studio City, California, the cast was rarely in Minneapolis.

As conceived by creators James L. Brooks and Allan Burns, Mary Richards (Moore) was suppose to be a divorcee. However, in greenlighting this vehicle for Mary Tyler Moore’s post-Dick Van Dyke Show return to sitcoms, CBS brass nixed that idea, fearing that viewers wouldn’t stand for a divorced woman and that some would be confused and think that Mary’s Laura Petrie had left Van Dyke’s Rob Petrie. It was unwarranted cowardice on the network’s part, but in a way, it was a blessing in disguise. It set the bar even higher for Brooks, Burns, and Moore. They had to imbue this straight, single “liberated” career woman in her 30s with enough strength, personality, and imagination to avoid making her either a lonely spinster or Lucille Ball’s in-the-closet lesbian daughter. What resulted, improbably enough, was the best-written and best-acted show of its era and arguably the most beloved TV show of all time. For one, The Mary Tyler Moore Show came to define the “work-place family” sitcom. Mary labored long hours as an associate producer at the struggling Minneapolis TV station WJM and spent much of her time with her grumpy but paternal boss Lou Grant (Asner), her wisecracking brotherly colleague Murray Slaughter (MacLeod), and the daffy and self-important anchorman Ted Baxter (Knight). Of course, she had another family at home, where she socialized and commiserated with acerbic but sisterly upstairs neighbor Rhoda Morgenstern (Harper) and their nosy, dithery landlady Phyllis (Leachman), who often functioned as the sort of meddling mother-in-law Mary Richards never had. Within the context of this extended family, Mary led a rich, complex emotional life. Seen from one angle, it was full of disappointments (her romances, some of which lasted for episodes on end, invariably concluded with Mary alone). But viewed another way, the way millions of fans saw her, Mary was surrounded by funny, solid friends who enabled her to be happy in her wall-to-wall shag-rug apartment and her wall-to-wall nutty newsroom. As the series progressed, things occasionally occurred to threaten the delicate balance of friendship and workplace calm, as when, late into the show’s run, Mary asked Lou out on a date. The episode was fraught with the tension of taboo: Lou’s was practically Mary’s surrogate dad. The evening proved to be a comic disaster, of course, filled with funny embarrassment, but at the end of the episode, as always, the workplace-family roles were firmly reestablished and order restored. But, what really made The Mary Tyler Moore Show so great was its liberation. When the former Mrs. Rob Petrie made it, after all, onto her own sitcom as a single TV-news producer in Minneapolis, it was liberating for women on TV. But it also liberated TV for adults, of both sexes. Since Mary Richards was neither a wife nor a mom nor (a la That Girl) a single gal defined mainly by her boyfriend, her self-titled sitcom was able to be a sophisticated show about grownups among other grownups, having grownup conversations. Moore made Mary into a fully realized person, iconic but fallible, competent but flappable ("Mr. Gra-a-a-ant!"), practical but romantic. Mary Richards was human and strong enough to be laughed with and laughed at, and that was the kind of liberation that mattered most.

[Hulk With A Mustache]

I almost forgot. Here is a recap of the previous 99 shows:

100. Saved By The Bell
99. The Real World
98. Rowan And Martin’s Laugh-In
97. The Beverly Hillbillies
96. The Venture Bros.
95. The Brady Bunch
94. Dynasty
93. Hollywood Squares
92. Bonanza
91. Batman
90. Happy Days
89. Taxi
88. Family Ties
87. The Office (U.S.)
86. Bewitched
85. WKRP In Cincinnati
84. Oz
83. The Odd Couple
82. Survivor
81. Gilligan’s Island
80. Freaks And Geeks
79. The Abbott And Costello Show
78. Beverly Hills 90210
77. My So-Called Life
76. Pee-Wee’s Playhouse
75. Everybody Loves Raymond
74. Deadwood
73. Lost
72. The Gong Show
71. The Rocky And Bullwinkle Show
70. The Office (U.K.)
69. The Incredible Hulk
68. King Of The Hill
67. General Hospital
66. Friends
65. Angel
64. Arrested Development
63. Battlestar Galactica
62. Mystery Science Theater 3000
61. Homicide: Life On The Street
60. Batman: The Animated Series
59. Good Times
58. Wiseguy
57. The Jeffersons
56. Twin Peaks
55. SCTV
54. ABC’s Wide World Of Sports
53. The Wonder Years
52. NYPD Blue
51. The Sopranos
50. The Price Is Right
49. Star Trek: The Next Generation
48. St. Elsewhere
47. Sanford And Son
46. Moonlighting
45. Magnum, P.I.
44. The Dick Van Dyke Show
43. Cowboy Bebop
42. Futurama
41. V
40. The Carol Burnett Show
39. The Bob Newhart Show
38. Monty Python’s Flying Circus
37. Married…With Children
36. Six Feet Under
35. South Park
34. Miami Vice
33. The Shield
32. Buffy The Vampire Slayer
31. 60 Minutes
30. Jeopardy!
29. The Cosby Show
28. Law & Order
27. The Late Show With David Letterman
26. ER
25. Frasier
24. The Prisoner
23. Gunsmoke
22. Your Show Of Shows
21. Roseanne
20. Saturday Night Live
19. Dallas
18. The Wire
17. Star Trek
16. The Honeymooners
15. Sesame Street
14. The Ed Sullivan Show
13. The Larry Sanders Show
12. Cheers
11. Roots
10. The Simpsons
9. The Twilight Zone
8. M*A*S*H
7. Hill Street Blues
6. I Love Lucy
5. Seinfeld
4. The Tonight Show
3. The X-Files
2. The Mary Tyler Moore Show

[Hulk With A Mustache]

And, now. Here it is. The Greatest TV Show Of All Time!

1. All In The Family



Genre: Sitcom.
Created by: Norman Lear.
Executive Producer(s): Norman Lear Mort Lachman, Hal Kanter, Heywood Kling, and Don Nicholl.
Starring: Carroll O'Connor (Archie Bunker), Jean Stapleton (Edith Bunker), Sally Struthers (Gloria Bunker Stivic 1971-1977), Rob Reiner (Michael Stivic 1971-1978), and Danielle Brisebois (Stephanie Mills 1978-1979).
Country of Origin: United States, but it is based on the United Kingdom sitcom Till Death Us Do Part, created by Johnny Speight.
Number of Seasons: 9.
Number of Episodes: 202.
Running Time: 30 minutes.
Original Channel: CBS.
Original Run: January 12, 1971 – April 8, 1979.
Spinoffs: The show had five spinoffs. The first was Maude (1972-1978), which focused on Edith’s cousin Maude Findlay (Bea Arthur), the complete opposite of Archie Bunker. Maude itself had a spinoff, Good Times. The second was The Jeffersons (1975-1985), which focused on George and Louise “Weezie” Jefferson, the Bunkers’ neighbors who ended up moving to a penthouse because of the success of George’s dry-cleaning stores. The Jeffersons itself had a spinoff, Checking In. The third was Archie Bunker’s Place, which was basically a continuation of All In The Family that lasted from 1979 to 1983; it had Archie Bunker buying a bar with Gary Rabinowitz (Barry Gordon), a liberal Jewish man. The fourth was Gloria (1982-1983), which focused on Gloria Bunker after her husband Mike had divorced her. And, the fifth and final spinoff was 704 Hauser, which featured an African-American family moving into the Bunker’s old house.

All In The Family was created by Norman Lear. He based the show on the British show Till Death Us Do Part, which had a similar premise. Lear bought the rights to Till Death Us Do Part and incorporated his own family experiences with his father into the show. Lear's father would tell Lear's mother to "stifle herself" and she would tell Lear's father "you are the laziest white man I ever saw" (two 'Archieisms' that found their way onto the show). There were three different pilots shot for the series, first was named "Justice" in reference to Archie's family name (later changed to Bunker). The second was titled Justice for All but was later changed to Those Were the Days. Different actors played the roles of Mike, Gloria, and Lionel in the first two. ABC became uneasy at about the time Richard Dreyfuss sought the role of Michael and canceled the project. Rival network CBS was eager to update its image, and was looking to replace much of its then popular "rural" programming (Mayberry R.F.D., The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction and Green Acres) with more "urban", contemporary fare (see Rural purge), and was interested in Lear's project. They bought the rights from ABC and re-titled the show All in the Family. Lear initially wanted to shoot in black and white, perhaps feeling that it would emphasize the Bunkers' stark surroundings to greater effect. While CBS insisted on color, Lear had the set furnished in rather neutral tones, keeping everything relatively devoid of color. All in the Family was the first major American series to be videotaped in front of a live studio audience. At the time, sitcoms were shot on film in front of an audience (like Mary Tyler Moore and The Dick Van Dyke Show), and the 1960s had seen a growing number of sitcoms filmed on soundstages without audiences, with a laugh track simulating audience response. After the success of All in the Family, videotaping sitcoms in front of an audience became common format for the genre during the 70s. However, the use of videotape also gave All in the Family the look and feel of the classic sitcoms of early television, which had been performed live before a studio audience (including the original live broadcasts of The Honeymooners, to which All in the Family is sometimes compared. In the final season, the practice changed to playing the already taped and edited show to an audience and recording their laughter to add to the original sound track. Thus, the voice-over during the end credits was changed from Rob Reiner's "All in the Family was recorded on tape before a live studio audience" to Carroll O'Connor's "All in the Family was played to a studio audience for live responses." (Typically, the audience would be gathered for a taping of One Day At A Time, and get to see All In the Family as a bonus.) Throughout its run, Norman Lear took pride in the fact that canned laughter was never used (mentioning this on many occasions); the laughter heard in the episodes was genuine. The house shown in the opening credits is located at 89-70 Cooper Avenue in the Glendale neighborhood of Queens, New York. One may notice there is no porch on that house. The fictional address of the Bunker home was 704 Hauser Street and a number of scenes took place on a porch during the series' run. This series starred veteran character actor Carroll O'Connor as Archie Bunker, a working-class, very outspoken bigot, prejudiced against everyone and everything not in agreement with his view of the world. His ignorance and stubbornness tend to cause his malapropism-filled arguments to self-destruct. He often responds to uncomfortable truths by blowing a raspberry. He longs for simpler times, when people sharing his viewpoint were in charge, as evidenced by the nostalgic theme song, "Those Were the Days," the show's original title. (In the first pilot filmed, the family name was Justice rather than Bunker.) By contrast, his wife Edith (Jean Stapleton) is a sweet, understanding, if somewhat intellectually limited woman. She usually defers to her always-opinionated husband, but on the rare occasions when she takes a stand, she proves to be one of the wisest characters in the series. This is perhaps best seen in episodes "The Battle of the Month" and "The Games Bunkers Play". Archie often tells her to "stifle herself" and calls her a "dingbat", but despite their very different personalities, they love each other deeply. They have one child, Gloria (Sally Struthers), who is married to baby boomer hippie college student Michael Stivic (Rob Reiner). Michael is part of the counterculture of the 1960s. He and Archie represented the real-life clash between the two generations: those who came of age during WWII and those who came of age during the Vietnam War. They constantly clash over religious, political, social, and personal issues. For much of the series, the Stivics live in the Bunker home to save money, providing even more opportunity for the two men to irritate each other. When they finally move out, it is to the house next door, offered to them by George Jefferson, the owner, who knew it would get to Archie. Archie frequently calls his son-in-law "meathead" and "Polack" (pronounced Polock) to insult Michael's intelligence and Polish ancestry respectively. The show is set in the Astoria section of Queens, one of New York City's five boroughs. The main characters included:

Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor): frequently called a "lovable bigot," an assertively prejudiced blue-collar worker. Former child actor Mickey Rooney was Lear's choice to play Archie, but Rooney declined the offer due to the strong potential for controversy and, in Rooney's opinion, poor chance for success. O'Connor enthusiastically sought the part, even though he agreed with Rooney's assessment. O'Connor was living in Italy at the time, and made his acceptance contingent on Lear's covering his airfare back to Italy if the show failed. At the end of the 1973-74 season, O'Connor attempted to renegotiate his contract. When he and producers reached a stalemate, he went on strike. To work around his absence, the writers devised a three-part episode in which Archie disappears on his way to a convention (O'Connor only appears for less than a minute, at the very end of the third part). Had O'Connor not returned to work by the time taping began on the third part, the writers had reportedly planned to kill the character off. Ironically, O'Connor, the actor who fought the most with Lear, remained with the series throughout its run, including the Archie Bunker's Place era. All the other actors either were written off before the end of its run or debuted in later seasons. O'Connor appeared in all but seven episodes.

Edith Bunker, née Baines (Jean Stapleton): Stapleton remained with the show all through the original series run, but decided to leave before the first season of Archie Bunker's Place had wrapped up. At that point, Edith was written out as having suffered a stroke and died off camera, leaving Archie to deal with the death of his beloved "dingbat". Stapleton appeared in almost every show with the exception of four.

Gloria Bunker-Stivic (Sally Struthers): the Bunkers' college-age daughter, married to Michael Stivic. Gloria frequently attempts to mediate Archie and Michael's arguments. The roles of Archie and Edith's daughter and son-in-law (then named "Dickie") initially went to Candice Azzara and Chip Oliver. However, after seeing the show's pilot, the original production company, ABC, requested a second pilot, expressing dissatisfaction with both actors. Lear recast the "Gloria" and "Dickie" roles with Struthers and Reiner. Penny Marshall, whom Reiner married in April 1971, shortly after the program began, was also considered for the role of Gloria.

Michael Stivic (Rob Reiner): Gloria's Polish-American hippie husband who is part of the counterculture of the 1960s. He constantly spars with Archie (in the original pilot, the character was Irish-American). As discussed in All in the Family retrospectives, Richard Dreyfuss sought the part, but Norman Lear was convinced to cast Reiner.

The supporting characters included:

George Jefferson (Sherman Hemsley), his wife Louise (Isabel Sanford), and their son Lionel (Mike Evans): Archie's African American neighbors. George is Archie's combative black counterpart, while Louise is a smarter, more assertive version of Edith. Lionel and Louise joined the show in its first season. Although previously mentioned many times, George was not seen until 1973. Hemsley, who was Norman Lear's first choice to play George, was performing in the Broadway musical Purlie and did not want to break his commitment to that show. However, Lear kept the role waiting for him until he had finished with the musical.

Henry Jefferson (Mel Stewart): George's brother. Stewart filled in for Hemsley. The two appeared together only once, in the 1973 episode in which the Bunkers host Henry's going-away party, marking Stewart's final episode and Hemsley's first. Even when the Jeffersons were spun off into their own show in 1975, Stewart's character was rarely referred to again and was never seen. In the closing credits of the "The First and Last Supper" episode, Mel Stewart is credited as playing George Jefferson. Stewart was actually playing George's brother, Henry Jefferson, who was pretending to be George for most of the episode.

Irene and Frank Lorenzo (Betty Garrett and Vincent Gardenia): the liberal and Roman Catholic next-door neighbors. They joined the show as semi-regulars in 1973; Gardenia only stayed for one season, but Garrett remained until her character was phased out in late 1975, later resurfacing as a regular in the sitcom Laverne and Shirley.

Stephanie Mills (Danielle Brisebois): Edith's 9-year old niece. The Bunkers take her in after the child's father, Floyd Mills, abandons her on their doorstep in 1978. (He later extorts money from them to let them keep her.) She would remain with the show through its transition to Archie Bunker's Place.

Barney Hefner (Allan Melvin): Archie's neighbor and best friend. The character first appeared in 1973 as a fairly minor character. Barney's role expanded toward the end of the series, after the departures of Reiner and Struthers.

Jerome "Stretch" Cunningham (James Cromwell 1973-1976): Archie's friend and coworker from the loading dock. What Archie did not know was that Stretch was Jewish, evident only after Stretch died and Archie went to the funeral.

Theresa Betencourt (Liz Torres 1976-1977): a Latina nursing student, who initially meets Archie when he is admitted to the hospital for surgery; she later rents Mike and Gloria's former room at the Bunker house.

Kelcy or Tommy Kelsey (Bob Hastings): who owns the bar Archie frequents and later buys.
Jason Wingreen as Harry Snowden, a bartender at Kelcy's Bar who continues to work there after Archie purchases it and eventually becomes his business partner. The name of the establishment is Kelcy's Bar (as seen in the bar window in various episodes). However, unaccountably, the end credits of episodes involving the bar owner spell the name "Kelcy" for the first two seasons and "Kelsey" thereafter, although the end credits show "Kelcy" in the "Archie Gets the Business" episode.

Mildred "Boom-Boom" Turner (Gloria LeRoy): a buxom, middle-aged secretary at the plant where Archie works, who is not initially fond of Archie due to his and Stretch's leering and sexist behavior, but later becomes friendly with him, occasionally working as a barmaid at Archie's Place.

Father Majeskie (Barnard Hughes): a local Catholic priest who was suspected by Archie one time of trying to convert Edith. He appeared in multiple episodes.

A number of actors played multiple roles during the show's run:

Jean Stapleton played both Edith Bunker and Judith Klammerstadt in the episode "A Girl Like Edith". The end credits list actress "Giovanna Pucci" for the latter character. In fact, this is a play on words with Stapleton's married name: Jean Putch.

Vincent Gardenia portrayed neighbor Jim Bowman, who sells the Jeffersons their house in "The Jeffersons Move In"; Curtis Rempley, half of a wife-swapping couple Edith befriends in "The Bunkers and the Swingers" (from the show's first and third seasons respectively); and later had a recurring role as neighbor Frank Lorenzo during the 1973-74 season.

Gloria LeRoy played the wife of one of Archie's old Army buddies (Duke Loomis) in third season episode "The Threat" and later portrayed Mildred "Boom-Boom" Turner in a few episodes between 1974 and 1978.

Allan Melvin played NYPD Sergeant Paul Pulaski in the second-season episode "Archie and the Lock-up" and later played the recurring role of Archie's best friend Barney Hefner from 1973 on.

Marcia Rodd appeared in two episodes during the 1971-1972 season, playing two different characters, first as a single mother who accuses Mike of being the father of her eight-year old son in "Mike's Mysterious Son", and Maude's daughter Carol in the episode "Maude". (Adrienne Barbeau would take over the role of Carol on spinoff series Maude.)

Bill Macy first appeared as a uniformed Police Officer in the "Archie Sees a Mugging" episode before returning as Maude's husband.

Roscoe Lee Browne appears as Hugh Victor Thompson III in "The Elevator Story" (1972) and then returns as Jean Duval in "Archie in the Hospital" (1973).

Burt Mustin played the role of night watchman Harry Feeney in the episode titled Archie is Worried About His Job. He came back later in a few episodes, as Justin Quigley, starting with Edith Finds an Old Man.

Sorrell Booke (who played Boss Hogg in the Dukes of Hazzard) played Mr. Bennett, the owner of a television station in "Archie and the Editorial (1972)" and then returned four more times as Mr. Sanders, Archie's boss down at the loading dock.

In a warning to viewers, CBS ran a disclaimer before airing the first episode (which disappeared from the screen with the sound of a toilet flushing):

"The program you are about to see is All in the Family. It seeks to throw a humorous spotlight on our frailties, prejudices, and concerns. By making them a source of laughter we hope to show, in a mature fashion, just how absurd they are."

All in the Family was notorious for featuring language and epithets previously absent from television, such as "fag" for homosexual, "hebe" for Jews, "spic" for Hispanics, "dago" and "wop" for Italians, "chink" for Asians, "spade" for Blacks, and phrases such as "God damn it." It was also famous for being the first major television show to feature the sound of a flushing toilet; it became a running gag on the show. While moral watchdogs attacked the show on those grounds, others objected to the show's portrayal of Archie Bunker as a "lovable" bigot. Defenders of the series pointed out that Archie usually lost his arguments by reason of his own stupidity. It is perhaps worth noting that Alf Garnett, Archie Bunker's counterpart in the original British series, was far from lovable and used much stronger language that would not have been allowed on US network television. In addition to its candid political dialogs, All in the Family's story lines also included a sense of realism not previously associated with sitcoms. A 1973 episode, for example, found the Bunkers discovering a swastika painted on their front door. (It had been intended for their Jewish neighbors down the street.) An activist from the Jewish Defense League showed up, proposing violent retaliation against whoever painted it, but upon leaving, he was blown up in his car, as the Bunkers watched in horror from their front door. To interweave illness, crime, or in this case, the off-screen violent death of a character into the plot of a comedy show was an unprecedented move. While Archie's bigotry and short-sightedness were the focus of much of the humor, Mike Stivic's naive liberal nature was on the receiving end of occasional jabs. In the episode Edith Writes a Song, where the family is held by African-American burglars, Mike attempts to intervene on Archie's behalf, explaining to the burglars how Archie does not know about the pain of ghetto poverty. One of the burglars, played by Demond Wilson and Cleavon Little, responds: "And YOU do?" All in the Family is the first of three sitcoms in which all the main characters won Emmy Awards (O'Connor, Stapleton, Struthers, and Reiner). The other two are The Golden Girls and Will & Grace. The longest sustained audience laughter in the show's history occurred in the famous episode-ending scene in which guest star Sammy Davis, Jr. plays himself. Archie is working as a cabdriver. Davis leaves a briefcase behind in his taxi and goes to the Bunker home to pick it up. Archie asks for a photograph with the famous celebrity; the picture captures Davis (after hearing some of Archie's racist remarks) suddenly kissing a stunned Archie on the cheek. The ensuing laughter went on for so long that it had to be severely edited for network broadcast, as Carroll O'Connor still had one line ("Well, what the hell — he said it was in his contract!") to deliver after the kiss. (The line is usually cut in syndication.) The series' opening theme song "Those Were the Days", written by Lee Adams (lyrics) and Charles Strouse (music), was presented in a unique way for a 1970s series: Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton seated at a console or spinet piano (played by Stapleton) and singing the tune on-camera at the start of every episode, concluding with live-audience applause. Several different performances were recorded over the run of the series, including one version that includes additional lyrics. The song is a simple, pentatonic melody (that can be played exclusively with black keys on a piano) in which Archie and Edith wax nostalgic for the simpler days of yesteryear. The additional lyrics in the longer version lend to the song a greater sense of sadness, and make poignant reference to social changes taking place in the sixties. A few perceptible drifts can be observed when listening to each version chronologically: In the original version after the first time the lyric "Those Were The Days" were sung over the tonic (root chord of the song's key) the piano strikes a Dominant 7th chord in transition to the next part and that is absent from subsequent versions. Jean Stapleton's screeching high note on the line "And you knew who you WEEERRE then" became louder, longer, and more comical, Carroll O'Connor's pronunciation of "welfare state" gained more of Archie's trademark enunciation and the closing lyrics (especially "Gee, our old LaSalle ran great.") were sung with increasingly deliberate articulation, as viewers had initially complained that they could not understand the words. In interviews, Norman Lear stated that the idea for the piano song introduction was a cost-cutting measure. After completion of the pilot episode, the budget would not allow an elaborate scene to serve as the sequence played during the show's opening credits. Lear decided to have a simple scene of Archie and Edith singing at the piano, a sequence that became one of the most famous and parodied openings in TV history. The closing theme (an instrumental) was "Remembering You" played by Roger Kellaway with lyrics co-written by Carroll O'Connor. It was played over footage of houses in Queens intended to represent the Bunkers' neighborhood. Except for some brief instances in the very first episodes, there was no background or transitional music. All In the Family is one of two television shows, The Cosby Show being the other, that has been number 1 in the Nielsen Ratings for five consecutive TV seasons. The series finale brought in 40.2 million viewers. All in the Family spawned several spin-offs, beginning with Maude on September 12, 1972. Maude Findlay, played by Beatrice Arthur, was Edith's cousin; she had first appeared on All in the Family in December 1971 in order to help take care of the Bunkers when they all were sick. Maude disliked Archie intensely, mainly because she thought Edith could have married better, but also because Archie was a conservative while Maude was very liberal in her politics. Maude was featured in another All in the Family episode in which Archie and Edith visited Maude's home in Westchester County to attend the wedding of Maude's daughter Carol; it aired near the end of the second season in the spring of 1972. The episode was essentially designed to set up the premise for the spin-off series Maude. In the episode, Bill Macy played Maude's husband, Walter; it was a role he would reprise for the weekly series that fall. Marcia Rodd, the actress who played Carol in the episode, was replaced by Adrienne Barbeau in Maude. The second and longest-lasting spin-off of All in the Family was The Jeffersons. Debuting on CBS on January 18, 1975 The Jeffersons lasted 11 seasons compared to All in the Family's 9 seasons. The main characters of The Jeffersons were the Bunkers' former next-door neighbors George Jefferson (Sherman Hemsley) and his wife, Louise "Weezie" Jefferson (Isabel Sanford). George Jefferson was the owner of a chain of seven successful dry-cleaning stores; as The Jeffersons begins, they have just moved from the Bunkers' neighborhood to a luxury high-rise apartment building in Manhattan's Upper East Side. George was considered to be the "Black Archie Bunker", and just as racist as Archie. George and Louise would later appear on the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. They bought the Banks mansion on the last show. Other spin-offs of All in the Family include: Archie Bunker's Place was technically a spin-off, but was more of a continuation of the series; Gloria, wherein Gloria divorces Mike and starts a new life; and 704 Hauser features the Bunkers' house with a new family. There were also two spin-offs from spin-offs of All in the Family: Good Times, features Maude's former maid Florida Evans and her family in a Chicago ghetto; and Checking In, the Jeffersons' maid Florence gets her own show. A 90-minute retrospective, All in the Family 20th Anniversary Special, was produced to commemorate the show's 20th anniversary which aired on CBS February 16, 1991. It was hosted by the creator, Norman Lear, and featured a compilation of clips from the show's best moments including interviews with cast members Carroll O'Connor, Jean Stapleton, Rob Reiner and Sally Struthers. Reiner and Lear promoted the special the previous week on The Arsenio Hall Show. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (formerly Columbia Tri-Star Home Entertainment) has released the first six seasons of All in the Family on DVD in Region 1.

At 9:30 P.M., on Tuesday, January 12, 1971, CBS aired the following disclaimer: “The program you are about to see is All In The Family. It seeks to throw a humorous spotlight on our frailties, prejudices, and concerns. By making them a source of laughter, we hope to show-in a mature fashion-just how absurd they are.” What followed was nothing that had ever been seen on American television. In that first episode, paterfamilias Archie Bunker (O’Connor) was like a verbal Gattling gun, firing off nonstop gripes about “spades, spics, and hebes.” When he and “dingbat” wife Edith (Stapleton) came home from church early, with Archie denouncing the sermon as “socialist propaganda,” they interrupted their daughter Gloria (Struthers) and son-in-law Mike (Reiner) having sex (“11:10 on Sunday morning!?” Archie bellowed.) CBS hunkered down for the onslaught of expected complaints, even hiring extra operators to field angry calls; despite the fact that the network hadn’t really publicized the show (not even a plot summary in TV Guide) and had buried it in a graveyard time slot right before a struggling series called 60 Minutes. Strangely, what CBS was most worried about the sexual reference, not offending viewers’ ethnic sensibilities. Up to an hour before airtime, network execs had argued with creator-producer Norman Lear and his partner Bud Yorkin that a milder episode should be broadcast. Lear and Yorkin threatened to quit, and CBS blinked. Lear had come up with All In The Family in 1967, when he learned of a British sitcom, Till Death Us Do Part, about an unregenerate working-class bigot. He acquired the U.S. rights and created an American version, drawing heavily on his own father (“a Jewish Archie Bunker,” he said) for the lead. Little did he know that his show would hit like a tornado of fresh air sweeping through a prime-time landscape blotted by the likes of Love, American Style and Hee Haw. Through that first episode didn’t do well in the Nielsens, by September, All In The Family had risen to No. 1, where it would remain for five more years. Along the way, it raised issues that had never been even glancingly referred to in a prime-time sitcom, much less mined for humor. Like politics: “Lemme tell you about Richard E. Nixon. He knows how to keep his wife Pat home. Roosevelt could never do that with Eleanor.” Religion: When a neighbor observed that the names of Archie’s parents suggested he might be Jewish, he answered: “David and Sarah, two names right out of the Bible, which has got nothing to do with the Jews.” Or, toilet humor: It was the first show to feature the sound of a toilet flushing. The show also delved deeply into persona subjects. In the 6th episode, Gloria’s pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. Later, America watched as Edith tried to cope with menopause; Archie grumbled in exasperation that he’d give her exactly 30 seconds to get through her “change of life.” Breast cancer, impotence, sexual assault, Mike’s vasectomy; the list goes on and on. So why All In The Family? Because, it changed TV. I know that sounds cliché, but it is true. Before All In The Family, TV was mainly an escapist medium. While escapism is just fine and dandy, there is a real world out; and All In The Family didn’t ignore that. It took the hardships, issues, and social problems that plague the real world and attempted to get laughs from it, which it pretty much did. And, a lot of that has to do with Carol O’Connor’s performance as Archie Bunker. Carroll O'Connor wrung humanity out of his stubborn, racist character, without excusing him, like a man sucking the last wisp of smoke out of a cheap cigar. And the show never let politics overwhelm its heart. It used one of the oldest setups in sitcomville (the locked-in-the-storeroom) to have Archie and Meathead bond over the story of how, as a poor kid forced to wear a shoe on one foot and a boot on the other, Archie earned his embarrassing childhood nickname Shoebooty. All In The Family allowed for other sitcoms, hell, other TV shows, to take the social morays of the day and skewer them with laughter, tears, or whatever. Most of the TV shows on this list, hell most of the TV shows since 1971, wouldn’t have been made if it hadn’t been for All In The Family. It made television into a tool of social art form. Plain and simple, it helped to change world. But, not completely: when CBS aired a 20th anniversary tribute to the show, censors initially balked at some of the promo shoots; though the material had aired decade earlier, it was thought too provocative. Though, he may have been an ignorant bigot, Archie Bunker was right about one thing: “Those were the days…”

[Hulk With A Mustache]

Here's the complete list:

100. Saved By The Bell
99. The Real World
98. Rowan And Martin’s Laugh-In
97. The Beverly Hillbillies
96. The Venture Bros.
95. The Brady Bunch
94. Dynasty
93. Hollywood Squares
92. Bonanza
91. Batman
90. Happy Days
89. Taxi
88. Family Ties
87. The Office (U.S.)
86. Bewitched
85. WKRP In Cincinnati
84. Oz
83. The Odd Couple
82. Survivor
81. Gilligan’s Island
80. Freaks And Geeks
79. The Abbott And Costello Show
78. Beverly Hills 90210
77. My So-Called Life
76. Pee-Wee’s Playhouse
75. Everybody Loves Raymond
74. Deadwood
73. Lost
72. The Gong Show
71. The Rocky And Bullwinkle Show
70. The Office (U.K.)
69. The Incredible Hulk
68. King Of The Hill
67. General Hospital
66. Friends
65. Angel
64. Arrested Development
63. Battlestar Galactica
62. Mystery Science Theater 3000
61. Homicide: Life On The Street
60. Batman: The Animated Series
59. Good Times
58. Wiseguy
57. The Jeffersons
56. Twin Peaks
55. SCTV
54. ABC’s Wide World Of Sports
53. The Wonder Years
52. NYPD Blue
51. The Sopranos
50. The Price Is Right
49. Star Trek: The Next Generation
48. St. Elsewhere
47. Sanford And Son
46. Moonlighting
45. Magnum, P.I.
44. The Dick Van Dyke Show
43. Cowboy Bebop
42. Futurama
41. V
40. The Carol Burnett Show
39. The Bob Newhart Show
38. Monty Python’s Flying Circus
37. Married…With Children
36. Six Feet Under
35. South Park
34. Miami Vice
33. The Shield
32. Buffy The Vampire Slayer
31. 60 Minutes
30. Jeopardy!
29. The Cosby Show
28. Law & Order
27. The Late Show With David Letterman
26. ER
25. Frasier
24. The Prisoner
23. Gunsmoke
22. Your Show Of Shows
21. Roseanne
20. Saturday Night Live
19. Dallas
18. The Wire
17. Star Trek
16. The Honeymooners
15. Sesame Street
14. The Ed Sullivan Show
13. The Larry Sanders Show
12. Cheers
11. Roots
10. The Simpsons
9. The Twilight Zone
8. M*A*S*H
7. Hill Street Blues
6. I Love Lucy
5. Seinfeld
4. The Tonight Show
3. The X-Files
2. The Mary Tyler Moore Show
1. All In The Family

And, that is that. I hope you enjoyed the list, even if you disagreed with a placement of a show.